Poetry
O Boriba
Not translated into English
Juan Balboa Boneke · 1982
Synopsis
A slim collection of some sixty pages, whose Bubi title means the exile. Its poems speak of exile, which the author lived for eleven years in the Balearic Islands, far from the island of his ancestors, and of the suffering of his Bubi people under the dictatorship; words from the Bôhôbe language slip into the Spanish, and some poems are written entirely in that language. Critics hear in it first of all the nostalgia for the homeland left behind, lived as a torment.
Context
The collection was published in 1982 by the Agrupación Hispana de Escritores, four years after a first book of poems published in Palma, and was followed in 1985 by a book about return. The author said that all his writings had come out of exile, and critics have made exile and commitment to the homeland the two lines of his poetry. Balboa Boneke was also a painter, and later published a history of his country's failed transition.
Who it is for
Short poems in Spanish, for those who want to read Equatorial Guinean exile through the voice of a Bubi from Rebola.
Prizes and reception
A pamphlet from a small publisher, the work has not been translated; critics remember in it the exile's lament.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.