Kiswahili

Or consider the Kiswahili language, which is Bantu in origin but borrows heavily from Indian and Middle Eastern tongues.

Book Bunk also partnered with the Nest, a Kenyan creative collective, to curate an exhibition from English and Kiswahili newspaper archives from the years 1963, when Kenya became independent, 1973 and 1983.

Like Zimbabwe’s Gappah, he braids Kiswahili into English; the tension both invigorates his language and heightens the struggles between Indigenous African peoples and their foreign overlords.

It includes well-known U.S. papers like the Chicago Defender and New York Amsterdam News as well as publications in French, Xhosa and Kiswahili.

But instead of lingering in the discomfort or seeking some empty form of reconnection, Kariūki moves fluidly between English, Maa and Kiswahili.