The following is from Migration Is Not a Metaphor, a series of works and excerpts by immigrant theatremakers that originally appeared in our Summer 2025 issue. To open the original print version in a new full-screen tab, click here.
the Tenderloin grew my eyebrows
Djibouti taught me all the languages I’d forget
The Mission had the best food, burritos & big macs
Bayview, Hunter’s Point on Progress Street.
A house in Dire
My akkoo used to sell injera in the market.
Birthed 7 hearts. One survived.
My uma worked in a coffee factory. No inglizii, just
pure grit.
Moving on up to the hillside
My shoulders were always tense.
I write.
Our hands have always been our superpower.
Them make things.
I met Jehovah in the Bay. Allah in Duluth.
My great great great grands know him as Waaqa.
Indigenous spirituality
Pagan when it meant civilian, dweller
Not what it means now.
In Waaqeffannaa, blackness is purity. God is most pure.
And then the goddess Atete. I know nothing but her name.
Could we be kin?
We’ve both lost our skin.
Healing comes with doro wat, marakka luukku.
Our stomachs and pulse intertwine.
The scent of fresh shaayii lingers in the air
My nostrils woken to home
I wonder how far back we’ve been drinking this blend of black tea & spices.
Lorraine Hansberry gifted me dried fruit at 15,
Thanks to Raoul Wallenberg High.
I drank her words like bishaan didn’t exist
My throat overcome with liberation
Ali Birra was a quiet soundtrack
Tupac much louder
Kwame McDonald, Whitney, Debbie Gibson, NKOTB,
Michael
Janet and Prince
The Marleys
and Nina
Poured into my larynx too.
My uma respects the writer in me.
Doesn’t understand the actor.
How can she not?
She’s the most dramatic person I know.
Greetings dance from her lips like a heightened benediction
The call and response of our people is eternal
Hararghe songs cracked open in a moment
Of gathering like no time no country has passed
Using just their muscles, bones, stomps and claps.
Proverbs from Oromo antiquity
Roll off her tongue like symphony
dhadhaa, kibbeh
clarified
Spicy and smooth
Fat with life lessons
I used to make fun of her accent
Now it’s all I listen for.
My feet carry the elders in heaven
Their unfinished desire
Baba Ola says my journey is sacred because it is theirs too. So much pressure…
With every step.
Like Meklit Hadero: I wanna sing for them all!
My legs are heavy with fear, they’ve always been bigger than the rest of me
My spine distorted from fitting in
Haacaaluu’s memory causes me on
My hips pop with the realization that jumping is required
Can’t rest too long
I’m their living dream
My mind can’t see it
But my vessel maneuvers in deed
A body passed down for the ages
There’s not one place we reside
But in periods and spirit
In flesh
And in breaths
The map is where we from
Where we going?
We decide.
Antu Yacob is an actor, playwright, screenwriter, and producer who has called many places home. Born in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, she was raised in San Francisco and Minnesota, surrounded by many languages and cultures. Her poem charts those personal origin stories as soul, body, artist, while considering the lineages of language and storytelling as a whole. Yacob’s new play On My Deen will have its world premiere at InterAct Theatre from June 6 through 28, 2025. She is part of The Fire This Time Festival’s New Works Lab Cycle 4 cohort and has collaborated with American Slavery Project, Primary Stages, Sheen Center, Crossroads Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Luna Stage, Cincinnati Playhouse, Philadelphia Theatre Co., Peterborough Players, Mixed Blood Theatre, Pangea World Theatre and Pillsbury House Theatre, Kampala International Theatre Festival (Uganda), United Solo Theatre, Project Y Theatre, Theatre167, Mile Square Theatre, and the Symposium on African Global Migration. She earned her MFA in Acting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University.
