Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber
Khadija Abdullah Bajaber is a Mombasa-born poet and novelist. She is best known for her 2021 novel The House of Rust, for which she was awarded the 2018 Graywolf Press Africa Prize. The novel later won the 2022 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize.
"I’m a visibly Muslim woman from Kenya, I understand that the world is very hostile toward a lot of the parts that make up my identity. I’m not a historian, I studied journalism but I’m not a practicing journalist. What I care about is not contributing to erasure or overlooking or forgiving it."
"It’s a gift, it’s a blessing. Say a prayer over it, let the blood from the old dead—usually so estranged to me—warm. When I eat what they ate, I am for a moment more than the little I am, I am the present because of what was past. I am blood. I have a people."
"Una donna non viene lodata quando soffre, ma soltanto quando soffre in silenzio"
"A donna does not have lodata when soffre, ma soltanto when soffre in silence"
