Transatlantic resonance: Orality, resistance, and diasporic lyricism in Hayes and Chingonyi | ||
| Journal of Languages and Translation | ||
| Volume 12, Issue 2, July 2025, Pages 50-59 PDF (247.84 K) | ||
| Document Type: مقالات بحوث مبتکرة | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/jltmin.2025.452166 | ||
| Author | ||
| Muhammad Ismael Nabih | ||
| Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Languages & Translation, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt. | ||
| Abstract | ||
| This paper explores the resurgence of orality and sonic strategies in contemporary transatlantic Black poetry, focusing on the works of Terrance Hayes and Kayo Chingonyi. It argues that both poets use sound not merely as a stylistic device but as a counter-hegemonic force that reimagines lyricism beyond the ocularcentrism of print culture. Drawing on Walter J. Ong’s theory of secondary orality, Fred Moten’s concept of the phonotext, and developments in sound studies and Black aesthetics, this study analyzes how Hayes’s (2018) American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin and Chingonyi’s (2017) Kumukanda reclaim the auditory dimension of poetry through voice, rhythm, and musical vernaculars. Through close readings, the analysis shows that this sonic emphasis positions the ear—rather than the eye—as the primary mode of poetic engagement and resistance. Situated within broader histories of displacement, racialized surveillance, and diasporic cultural survival, this paper suggests that sonic poetics offers new possibilities for decolonizing lyric form across borders. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Black sonic poetics; diasporic memory; secondary orality; transatlantic Black literature; resistance through sound | ||
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