| In The Road To Kenema Samuel Hinton presents a
poignant, sometimes searing portrait of a man who stands with
one foot planted firmly in the ageless soil of Africa, the other
on the promise-filled shores of America. Balancing memories
of his homeland with dreams of his adopted country, Hinton takes
his reader on a journey that is often upsetting, but always
engaging. In poems such as “The Road To Kenema, Sierra
Leone,” “Grave -Digger, Freetown,” he weaves
a rich tapestry of a people who celebrate the primal joy of
life while the “Rapists,” “Song To Somali
Dead,” and “War Child” weep for a land equally
primal in its violence and pain. Whether depicting beauty or
horror, Hinton’s poems are marked by an appeal to the
senses that bring his native land and its people alive; each
poem beckons, almost forces, the reader to experience the situation
at hand.
No less powerful are Hinton’s poems treating his American
experience. Underlying each is a tension between a fierce
desire to embrace his adopted land and a bitter awareness
of this promised land’s shortcomings. In “Of Immigrant
Songs,” for example, the new land at once offers voices
“ridiculing his duality of being” while at the
same time offering “the challenge of responsible/ citizenship,
to e pluribus unum/ and yes, a lifetime quest,/the American
dream.” Equally disturbing is the voice of “Immigrant
Frustrations” that laments, “in the old country/they
think ‘you sound American,’/and in the new ‘you
have an accent.”
Even when celebrating the new land, the poems contain an
undercurrent of discontent, of suspicion. In the moving “Fourth
of July” Hinton lends a unique perspective on our most
patriotic holiday with a litany of unfulfilled dreams for
African Americans while his “Speak Out” cries
for an end to our country’s racism and “the
conspiracy of silence latent all around” with a plea
to “Speak out until they take note/and call the stupid/game
off, for everyone’s sake.” Perhaps no poem in
the collection pulls Hinton’s two worlds together more
forcefully than “Tribal Rumblings,” in which he
decries the groups in both countries guilty of “desiccating
the race/into factious groups” and missing a “simple
truth-/a race that nurtures disunity/always shall in bondage
be.”
A great many of Hinton’s poems transcend both the African
and the American experience to touch that which is human to
us all. Whether it be the white carpet of a snowy day, a rainbow
after a storm, or “colors matching peacocks feathers”
on a Spring day, Hinton delights us with the wonders of our
world. So, too, he explores the depths of human relationships
in such poems as his emotion-charged “Mother”
and “Mulatto” or the whimsical “Why Me?”
and “Fast Hearts.” His “Steel” and
“The Bus” reveal a fascination with the details
of everyday life while “Lonesome” and “A
Vow” reflect a desire for introspection and self criticism.
Indeed, The Road To Kenema has many treasures for its reader.
The poems will make us laugh and cry, but most importantly
they will make us feel as we experience life through the vivid
vision of Samuel Hinton. |
