Bound As We Are
Contemporary Eritrean Poetry in Exile
Vienna Human Rights Edition of Eritrean Poetry
Poems by Haile Bizen, Ermias Ekube, Yirgalem Fisseha, Yonas Welderufael Ghebrehiwot, Saba Kidane, Mohammed Madani, Akberet Mehari, Daniel R. Mekonnen, Kokob Tesfaldet.
Eritrea is a cemetary of human rights. This book brings together the voices of Eritrean writers whose fundamental rights have been denied in their homeland, who have been forced into exile, and who have consequently lost the original resonant space in which their writing once found its audience. They bear witness to a literature that, despite political repression, continues to claim a space of its own and defend it. English, the lingua franca of our time, was chosen, because it opens up a new literary horizon for writers in exile - one situated between a homeland that has been lost and a global public sphere that remains to be reclaimed.