of a transnational identity punctuated by an exilic consciousness. While one aspect deals
with questions of memory in a manner that fuses the disjunction between the past and the
present, and accentuates reflections on conditions and experiences in his country of origin,
the second part takes on existential issues about the space of his country of destination. The
idea at this point is to treat the preoccupation of the first part and subsequently link it with
the concerns of the second. Although published in 2004, the poems in the first part bring up
once again the question of memory together with the important place it occupies in the
understanding of a “personal past”. Yet as a poet and intellectual whose solidarity is not
refracted by a poststructuralist deferral, in engaging a personal past about his country of
origin, the social and the communal are also engaged to a point that confirms that the
postcolonial writer, especially the African writer, is after all, a product of his society and to
this society he must strive to give back what he has previously benefited (Kwame Gyekye
(1997: 35). For that matter, distance should not constitute a barrier.
Perhaps one of the finest illustrations of this assertion is found in the opening poem, “The
Stench of Porridge”. While on the one hand, it is reminiscent of Mapanje’s years of
imprisonment without trial, it also transcends at the same time the easy yield to an
interpretation of the obvious. Therefore, it is more substantially a humanitarian concern
that echoes Michel Foucault’s contention that “there have indeed been studies of prisons as
institutions, but very few of imprisonment as a general punitive practice in our society”
(1994: 224). Put another way, the poem’s preoccupation is an ascension of the Foulcaudian
interrogative “ how does one punish?” (224). In other words, there may not be questions
about why certain people are subjected to punishment by the state, knowing that beyond the
indelicate and unjustified tyrannical orders by which perceived enemies of the
establishment are hurled into prison and detention, there is nevertheless a basis for
subjecting some other people to imprisonment for reasons bordering on anti-social
practices. But the crucial question within the scope of the argument in this poem is “how
does one punish?” Therefore casting his mind back to his detention days, Mapanje raises a
pivotal question about the condition of the prison space, and one can argue, not only in
Malawi, but also in many other parts of the world, where conditions of the experience of
serving out jail terms are more often than not counter productive and, ironically, an