On the Pain of Belonging, Congolese Identity, and the Power of Poetry
This interview is a result of notes sent via Google Docs between Kisumu and Vienna.
Akal: Greetings, Laurène! I hope that things in Vienna are fine —or at least fair.
It’s 12:44 hrs, 26-05-2025, over here in Kenya. Check the date again and you will realise that it is a day after George Floyd was killed five years ago. May his soul keep resting in peace. I bring him up not for any reason rather than to peg it on a line from your poetry collection, Child Of Congo. The line: Does our pain (n)ever truly end…? Let’s start here: what pain is currently holding your life together?
Laurène: Wow, I wonder if anyone still remembers this period of time. May God rest his soul. In the simplest of terms, I think that the pain from the lack of belonging is what occupies my consciousness the most lately. You know, I have materialistic goals like publishing my own book, as much as spiritual ones, but my spiritual goals are far more important to me. Unfortunately, I wasn’t brought up with a strong foundation, for example, a family, friendship, love, faith and a community I could grow from. As I’m getting older, this feeling of emptiness is becoming more apparent. The fact that I’ve been able to live without the core to my values is astonishing to me, but now that I’ve waited for so long because I was aiming to preserve myself, I did not realise that it also meant finding others who share similar principles would be an enormous challenge. Just under the span of five months, there was a lot of pain I had to face entirely alone. And I’m starting to notice not only the mental effect of transactional relationships, but also the physical impact it has on me. From family members who believe my sole duty is to finance their lifestyle in exchange for their care, romantic interests with inconsistent commitment, one-sided emotional reciprocity, to temporary community access because I am on the move just so damn much, and I struggle with building lasting connections. It might be shocking to some that everything is happening in parallel to unveiling my writing to the world, but it is very real. For a strange reason, I find it hard to come across individuals who aren’t self-absorbed, mingle with me because of my supposed “likeness” or just want to take, take and take without end. That’s why my book presentation in Zürich was so pivotal for me; it let me know that kind people still exist, and this is something I can overcome.
Akal: I hear you, Laurène.
Onto your collection, Child of Congo. The title is explanatory; an introduction to your identity. Beneath the title, you write: “Where It All Began”.Could you say more on this line?
Laurène: You can not know where you’re going without knowing where you came from. In the Occident, the way we are taught to think about ourselves is as an individual, singular, primair. In such, your story, your narrative, your purpose in this society begins with you, and it is up to you what legacy you will leave behind. Of course, I’m referring to a very peculiar social class; however, it has always fascinated me how, although history states countless times that the family you’re born into matters, nowadays in the Western world, your family name doesn’t hold much weight. There are people who would even go as far as changing their given names to a nickname or something that I guess sounds “cool.”
In contrast, for Africans, everything revolves around family. For example, young people my age live to honour their parents and ensure they keep up their family’s reputation. When a person wants to become someone, they orient themselves with what is missing in their village. In that sense, individual goals are indebted to collective thinking. It’s a beautiful practice and in my opinion, one that must be kept. Now referring to the subtitle, in recognising my ancestry, my lineage and the passage my parents had to endure to come to this corner of the world and work long years to receive their European papers, which permits me to live, on paper, in a similar manner to the European natives. I’m also indebted to them and must acknowledge my family ties by reclaiming their stories, dreams, and livelihoods, which still live within me in fragments. My way of honouring is stating that my story does not begin with me, but my whole family tree, and I’m just a leaf or a branch added onto this beautiful picture.
Akal: I must say that I do admire how you employed both past and present histories of Congo in your poems. What sources were you using since you no longer live in Congo?
Laurène: There wasn’t a single source or format that didn’t fuel the writing of this book. It could have been music, visual arts, photography, literal excerpts, documentaries, conversations with family members, real-time situations, etc, and I would just absorb what is in front of me like a sponge and then turn it into something beautiful. It is important to note that the kingdom of Kongo is one of the most sought-after occurrences of African history; however, little is done to preserve and teach young Africans about this. For many, that is the starting point of Congolese history, and so, if you don’t even know your history, what do you sincerely know about yourself? By being mindful of what narratives are out there and what is prominent versus untouched, I’d specifically write about past occurrences in hopes the reader would notice any hint and conduct their research about a poem title, a word, or the entire body of the poem itself. Perhaps what some may ignore is that I actually didn’t just look up Congolese sources, but the entire continent. It goes without saying that no matter what surface of this land, Africans always mingled and were very much aware of each other. Such informed, birthed and impacted the continental map as we see it today, whether you were on the receiving end or the one imposing it. By no means am I an expert, nor should my writing be taken as factual evidence. As I always say, Child of Congo is a Congolese tale about resilience.
Akal: True. What you are saying about Africans always mingling with one another. The mingling is not just about cultures; it overarches into liberation as well. I mean, camaraderie during the struggle for independence transcended borders, and this I could tell you is what is happening even today, as seen in this story of these two activists from Kenya and Uganda standing in solidarity against the oppression of activists in Tanzania.
Your poem, Free Congo, has a line: ‘…to the ones who’ve only known about despair/ and so do their parents and their parents' parents before them’. How has being away from Congo, from Africa, changed the texture of your despair?
Laurène: That’s amazing! It really proves the continental borders were always a human fabrication, but our minds walk farther. During my presentation in Zürich, I was asked a similar question. When it comes to the African continent and its diaspora community, I view our despair as an extension, not separate. It stands from the same root, and although we geographically occupy different terrains, what you may not consider is that our parents came here for a new life, bringing their traumas from back home with them. Traumas can transcend from one generation to another; although not spoken of, they are well present.
The texture of our despair is very complex. Especially for the diaspora in Europe, as we’re predominantly younger, I mean, the most members I came across are first or second generation. This would bring us back to talks surrounding individuality, where in African countries, America and the Caribbean, I believe the diaspora lean more towards a singular voice; whereas here, we’re all over the place. I can take, for example, my own family, our duties and identities differ drastically. I have siblings who don’t care and don’t see themselves as Congolese at all; they have completely taken their European nationality as theirs, and it is far more common than one would think. How do you unify a community into one voice when everyone views themselves differently? There aren’t any values that connect us. That is why we’re highly influenced by American media: we don’t have our own foundation to fall back on. This is what drives our disparity to high levels when we don’t feel like we truly belong anywhere. Some of us long for this part of us that has been abandoned, and a few of us never get to access this part of our identity again. So it is an interesting dynamic we’re witnessing develop in its own twisted way.
Akal: “How do you unify a community into one voice when everyone views themselves differently?”- such a question! Well, in response, I’ll quote from this paper, “poetry offers a way of being together, that is, an empathetic connecting of others by experiencing and feeling together: poet to reader; reader to reader.”
Do you feel like your collection is offering this? What empathies/sympathies do you feel you have invoked through the poems in Child of Congo?
Laurène: In the few times I have performed some of the poems in front of an audience, there wasn’t a person in the room who couldn’t relate to a passage, who couldn’t see themselves behind a word, nor place themselves in the shoes of the narrator. Like I said multiple times before, Child of Congo serves as a mirror to evoke feelings hidden within the reader. I truly believe that anyone who comes across this book will find their own meaning in the collection. Whether this reading experience will transcend into something greater is up to the reader. In my opinion, it has never been about the author and what they are trying to convey. As one of the few creative expressions that extracts gender, race, age, beauty standards and such, and you are left with a faceless narrator speaking through the soul of a community, you don’t have much choice but to view its characters as human beings, you don’t have the choice to look from within and observe how certain excerpts make you feel and what emotions are left once the book is completed. Like you said, you may have togetherness through writing, and if you’re lucky, you may as well uncover parts of yourself.
Akal: Believe it or not, Laurène, I have been looking into the ‘African soul’, asking myself questions and conversing with other artists about how to quell and quench the ‘African soul’. It might seem like a digression, but using the phrase, ‘soul of a community’, just reminded me of that. Anywho, about your collection, can we talk about the structural arrangement of the book? I see there are six chapters/sections. How were you deciding on which poems to place where?
Laurène: When it comes to the collection's structure, I thought deeply about the build-up of a novel and how I wanted to interpret that essence. You know, a beginning, a middle and an ending. It is the simplest of things, but effective. Especially in poetry, which I believe most of my audience were not readers of that genre before they got their first copy. So how do you make them read your collection to the very last page? It can be a challenge to delve into an ensemble of poems. I never thought about my poems as a collective; however, I realised that I was following a thematic pattern. Putting them in a certain order felt natural to me. I trusted my instincts and let them guide me to put together the book’s final structure.
Akal: I hear you. In fact, before I forget, there is something about the structure that I would like to know. In the last part(VI), all four poems: Bad Faith, Fool’s Paradise, I Mistaken God for the Sun, and God Is Love speak to the readers' religious and spiritual lives. It is perhaps a depiction of how, in the end, we all want to return to hope and faith and rest and peace. I acknowledge agnostics and atheists when implying that these serenities can only be found in God. My question, though, is why you decided to end it on this note? God’s note?
Laurène: I am not religious by any means; I grew up in a house of God. Fearing God was deeply rooted in me already as a little infant. The way that I regard faith is like its own language. Even now, as a grown adult, I still find myself operating in the state of mind of a follower. That’s to say, my journey with religion is complicated, and my relationship with God even more. I don’t think I can talk about myself without mentioning God. To this day, that presence still surrounds me, and it was important for me to include a chapter on faith, or the lack of it.
Akal: Now that we are done reading Child of Congo, should we expect a Child of Vienna(assuming you are based there)? I guess I am just asking what we should expect next?
Laurène: What is expected is a re-edition through a publisher because access is important. Right now, there are more readers who have heard about the collection than there are who own copies. There are also more of those who have been inspired by the process than by the content within the collection. For me, it’s simple; those who want a book should be able to get a copy. Following that breakthrough, I believe the complete edition of Child of Congo should make its way as well. After my residency, I submitted the first manuscript to the African Poetry Fund, and it got rejected. I still had more to say, so I began writing additional tales I felt were important. That is how the chapbook and complete edition were made. All of this is speculation; however, one thing is sure. Everyone will have access to my writing by the end of the year. Everything else is by God's will.
Akal: Thank you for your time, Laurene. It has been nice talking to you. Until next time.
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AKAL is a Kenyan short story writer, essayist, and poet. He has previously been shortlisted for the Africa Writers’ Award in poetry. Akal is also a 2023 Idembeka Creative Writing fellow and Ibua Novel Manuscript workshop attendee. In 2022, he was a recipient of two digital residencies organised by the University of East Anglia, one of which resulted in a short story collection that he contributed to. Akal reads in trust and writes in faith.
LAURÈNE is a writer, poet, essayist, songwriter, journalist and author of Congolese heritage. Her poems have been published in Brittle Paper, the Shallow Tales Review and ‘The Africa Migration Report: An Anthology of Poems; Volume 1’.
