Ará'lúèbó: The Immigrant Monologues
Ará'lúèbó: The Immigrant Monologues
by KÁNYIN Olorunnisola
Released March 15, 2026
The Yoruba word Ará'lúèbó (/ah-rah-loo-ay-bow/), as the book tells us, means "an endearing term for a native who has gone abroad, and/or is returning" or "a person who becomes a foreigner everywhere they go."
In his debut poetry collection, KÁNYIN Olorunnisola showcases the expansiveness of the immigrant experience through the form of the choreopoem, a non-Western style of poetry that incorporates elements of music and theater. The collection tells a multitude of stories through five people (Odunsi, beja, Levi, Sekina, and Ismaila), who, though fictional, represent the emotional truths of the lived experience of an African residing in the United States. As Ismaila says early on, "we r five fly kids hyphenated by time & / geography."
Mixing Yoruba, Nigerian Pidgin, and English, Ará'lúèbó The Immigrant Monologues is a blend of linguistic influences, with debts to visual art and rap music. At the center of its expression is formal experimentation; poems are structured like movie screenplays, diary entries, flowcharts, pie charts, and dictionary entries. The book encompasses a broad span of American, African, and other world history, even as it is strongly rooted in the contemporary, with references to Lauryn Hill, Kendrick Lamar, and other Black creatives. Ultimately, the book asks who is allowed to belong and paints a portrait of what it means to be American and from elsewhere.
KÁNYIN Olorunnisola is a multidisciplinary experimentalist of Yoruba descent. His writing has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Chicago Review of Books, Al Jazeera, FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, and elsewhere. His debut short film, Chiaroscuro, premiered at the 2024 Rising Tide Film Festival. He is the founder of Sprinng Inc., a literary nonprofit, and a former nonfiction editor of the Black Warrior Review. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
