Hali F Sofala-Jones

Afakasi - Half-Caste Hali F Sofala-Jones

Hali F. Sofala-Jones has written the map for straddling cultures, for existing in a misunderstood body. In it, the speaker's haunting search for identity is a universal search and a how-to guide for the lost--for the silenced, for the forgotten, for those who don't fit into neat boxes. Afakasi - Half-Caste offers them a place to belong. Sofala-Jones hands the reader her "miner's helmet, lamp affixed" so we might see the path searched for in the dark. We learn from the missteps of the speaker. She believed in the VHS-taped musicals that defined love as a courting that only pale beauties deserved but discovers that love can be a shop boy who pops the tab of her Coke and kisses her knuckles, and she learns that she is not destined for loneliness because her body diverges from the American ideal. With this collection, Sofala-Jones traces a route over the one society has drawn, then pauses, offering the pen, waiting for the reader to take hold.