The Horse Eaters (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780999447147)

This is an origin tale, a reclamation of memory, a movement towards wholeness in thought that helps shape action and inform deed. These poems are an anchor cast out from the graveyard in the Atlantic ocean tethering the beginning of the myth of me in North America to a place.

Ayodele's poetry is a combo of her MFA training and her Lower Bottom Playaz socialization. One must be aware she is a dramatist as well; thus, her style reflects our oral tradition, especially in the rawness and truthfulness of her writing as an extension of the Black Arts Movement.--Marvin X

THE HORSE EATERS is a masterful blending of a resilience blueprint, wisdom for the poetic journey into justice, and artfully divine inspiration. How does one negotiate life when given the tools of negativity but the inner spirit houses an abundance of gifted determination? Dr. Nzinga writes, 'If you have a bulldozer; you can wait for opportunity. If you have a teaspoon; you must learn to make it.' THE HORSE EATERS beautifully displays the notions of searching for freedom inside of a given storm, and pulls no punches in regard to the harshness of the traverse. But, it also delivers a roadmap, lined with prophetic clarity, on how to survive a systemic trampling. The words are not simply to be read. They are to be ingested and worn upon the heart.--Regina Evans

Adodele Nzinga clings to metaphors with the same force that forms diamonds out of sand. Not letting them go until their value is apparent. Her plain-spoken flow is bereft of pretension, yet clearly a linguistic gift. In the eponymous essay which opens THE HORSE EATERS, Nzinga holds truth close to her heart, and it explodes onto the page like a bomb-or better yet, a balm, salving at a centuries-old wound which can only be healed by understanding, compassion, and the manifestation of racial equity. She abstracts her expression in the prose poems which follow, each one ringed with emotional resonance and resilience born out of her ancestors' struggles--as well as her own lived experience.--Eric Arnold

Ayodele Nzinga has arrived as a poet of heroic strength and authority. Ayodele sows word seeds and clears an upward path through concrete and bulldozers, armed with only a teaspoon of hunger and determination to give voice and testament to the powerful spirit of her people in the on-going struggle for freedom.--Genny Lim

Poetry. African & African American Studies.