“After 24 Years Away: Wangeci Gitau’s Coka Mũciĩ Invites the Diaspora to Reimagine What It Means to Come Home”
“Join the Coka Mũciĩ Art Talk & Poetry Launch in Lawrence Exploring Migration, Memory, and Homecoming”
Coka Mũciĩ (“Come Home”): Public Art Talk and Bilingual
Poetry Book Launch Explores Migration, Memory, and Return
When: Saturday April 18, 2026, 4:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Where: Modular Studios, 15 Union St, Suite 606, Lawrence, MA 01840
Cost: Free and open to the public (Books available for purchase)
Coka Mũciĩ (“Come Home”) is an in-person and digital public art talk poetry book launch
at Modular Studios, hosted by author & artist Wangeci Gitau. Designed as a community-
centered gathering rather than a traditional reading, the event brings together film,
poetry & spoken word, conversation, music, food, and visual art to explore migration,
language, and return. Coka Mũciĩ was written following Gitau’s first return to Kenya in
24 years where in preparation for the trip, she studied Gikũyũ, the Indigenous language
of her ancestors, the Agikũyũ people of Central Kenya. As a formerly undocumented
immigrant, the journey was a reckoning shaped by decades of separation: grandparents
buried in absence, cousins never met, and a mother tongue understood but not fully
spoken.
While in Kenya, she wrote extensively and upon returning to the United States, the
journals transformed into the bilingual collection of Gikũyũ and English poetry
chronicling themes of home, loss, survival, and what it means to return changed. Coka
Mũciĩ offers another possibility: a return marked by agency, reflection, and community
witness.
The evening will include a short film from Gitau’s 2025 return to Kenya, a bilingual
poetry reading in Gikũyũ and English, a facilitated art talk, and a book signing. Kenyan
cuisine from a local Kenyan vendor, and a flower installation by a local florist will
shape the space as one of gathering and reflection. In addition to livestreaming the
event, photography and video will be captured to extend beyond Lawrence.
Rooted in Community
Hosting the event in Lawrence is intentional. The city has served as Gitau’s “other
home,” sustained by immigrant communities who understand migration as lived experience
rather than abstraction. The gathering creates space to speak openly about language
loss, displacement, and belonging, and to challenge the notion that immigrants must
prove their wort
