Happy You Are Here

Poetry. California Interest. African & African American Studies. Global yet intimate, this poetry collection takes the reader on journeys of the soul and the mind—as well as from one continent to another and back again. Born in Tanzania, Ayaz Pirani weaves of loss a beautiful cloth, conjuring lands and loves that endure to make us whole in spite of suffering.

Says Heather Birrell: "In this lovely and loving collection, Pirani positions himself as a kind of plainspoken anti- prophet, bringing human nosiness and gratitude to a number of subjects—displacement and immigration, the oak woods of the Arroyo Seco, a mother's love, a pub in Toronto, 'dark-haired beauties,' Tanzania's Ngorongoro Crater—as well as the more mysterious geographies of the soul. Pirani's images and exhortations will stop up your throat and thrum in your heart."

Suzanne Buffman calls this book "radical" and notes that "Pirani maps an austere happiness, and discovers, in love's company, an iridescent interior."