My Poetry Corner October 2022 features the poem “Leviticus” from the poetry collection The Body Family (Haymarket Books, 2022) by Hope Wabuke, a Ugandan American poet, essayist, and critic. Born in the United States to Ugandan refugees, she earned a Bachelor of Science in Film and Media Studies (1998-2002) at Northwestern University, Illinois, as well as an MFA in Creative Writing (2004-2007) at New York University.

In The Body Family, Wabuke explores her family’s escape in 1976 from Idi Amin’s Ugandan genocide and the aftermath of healing in America. She focuses on the nature of personal trauma juxtaposed against national trauma. In her interview with Julie Brooks Barbour for Connotation Press, the poet explained:

“I look at the national trauma of the genocide in Uganda as part of the legacy of colonialism in Africa by European powers, and the national trauma of violence against black bodies in America that has been ongoing since the founding of this country. These two violences are interconnected. There is a global culture of anti-blackness that is manifested, whether in post-British colonial Africa or in America, where the black body is erased, and what is layered upon it are negative stereotypes of blackness. Both are an erasure. Both are a disappearance. A large part of my writing is to get past these layered stereotypes, to unerase the erasure.”

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