R240.00
In Fluent in the Language of Burial, Thando Fuze confronts the systems and inherited wounds that compel people to silence or erase parts of themselves. Through poems exploring queer identity, gender-based violence, religion, family, shame and Black women’s embodiment, burial becomes a language of grief, concealment, survival and longing. Fierce, vulnerable and deeply necessary, this debut collection unearths what has been hidden and transforms silence into testimony.
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Description
Fluent in the Language of Burial is a fiercely intimate poetry collection that asks what it means to survive within systems that demand silence, even erasure. Through themes of queer identity, gender-based violence, inherited shame, religion, family and Black women’s embodiment, Thando Fuze’s poems explore the emotional and social architectures that teach vulnerable groups of people to bury parts of themselves.
“Burial” is understood not only as an act of mourning, but as a language of concealment, survival, inheritance, grief and longing. Fuze’s languaging traces the many forms of this vocabulary, in which silence becomes both wound and strategy. These poems navigate the pressure and the particular violence of self-silencing. The hard-earned voice of Fluent in the Language of Burial performs an act of exhumation: the poems open, unearth and name, giving breath to what had been sealed away.
It is a collection that is bold, vulnerable and necessary, an unapologetic intervention that transforms burial into revelation, and survival into imaginative testimony.
“Thando Fuze offers us many deaths. big and small. of the body and the self. the words are knives and song – as wide as love and as minor as dislike. i am small and must grow up, not knowing i will survive . . . into woman. in this country. into this book. Fuze’s words follow me into the night. this haunting gift of poetry.”
– vangile gantsho
About the author
Thando Fuze is a Durban-born poet, performer, curator and cultural activist whose work explores identity, sexuality, gender justice, politics and contemporary Black womanhood. A powerful spoken-word artist committed to community building and youth empowerment, she founded the SHEfted Minds project in 2016 to amplify female artists and has used poetry in schools and colleges as a supportive space for young people. Fuze has appeared at prominent festivals in South Africa, Sweden and Ghana, and her work has been published in anthologies including Home Is Where the Mic Is and #Hashtag. Fluent in the Language of Burial is her debut poetry collection.
