JJ Bola

JJ Bola is a Kinshasa-born, British poet, writer and educator,[1] based in London. He has written three collections of poetry as well as two novels, No Place to Call Home (2017) and The Selfless Act Of Breathing (2021), and a non-fiction book about masculinity and patriarchy for young people, Mask Off: Masculinity Redefined (2019).[2] His writing explores themes of displacement and belonging.[3]

JJ Bola
Born
Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo
NationalityBritish
Alma materBirkbeck, University of London
Occupation(s)Poet, writer and educator
Notable workNo Place to Call Home: Love, Loss, Belonging (2017)

Life and work

Bola was born in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo.[1] He migrated to London with his parents at the age of six.[4][5] He was a basketball player as a teenager, competing in national-level tournaments;[2][4] not having a British passport, he could not travel to international competitions and was unable to respond to interest from universities in America.[3][4]

He won a Kit de Waal Creative Writing Scholarship to study at Birkbeck, University of London (2017), earning an MA degree.[6]

His debut novel, No Place to Call Home (published in 2017 by Own It!),[7] is about the journey of a family coming from the Congo to the UK to seek asylum as refugees, which Bola said "tackles the questions of belonging and identity, and this feeling of ... how there isn't a place for you but also how communities come to form themselves away from the places they feel they belong to and how they survive in different spaces and some of the issues and interactions that go around that."[6]

Interviewed in 2017, he further explained: "For me coming to the UK as part of a family who were refugees and not having citizenship and then having citizenship and then having a passport and then being able to attach myself to a national identity that I wasn't able to before, the question of belonging was something that I was confronted with."[8] As he has described himself: "I am a refugee with a British passport."[5]

Bola has been an ambassador for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) since 2017, when he attended the World Economic Forum.[9] In 2018, his three poetry books – Elevate, Daughter of the Sun, and WORD – were published in one volume titled Refuge, which was read out in the British House of Commons during Refugee Week that year.[10] He was invited to the Davos Economic Forum 2018 and held a discussion with Cate Blanchett.[11]

In 2019, Bola published Mask Off: Masculinity Redefined, a "brutally honest" work of non-fiction that draws upon his own experience growing up as it "guides the reader with a voice, both calm and matter-of-fact, through the ways specific kinds of masculinities have been distorted into violence. Within the first few pages, he asks the question his younger self asked, 'what does it actually mean to be a man?', the question 'that we're not supposed to ask'."[12] Red Pepper concluded that, as a text written for boys and young men, "this is a book that should be in the library of every secondary school in the country."[13]

Bola's second novel was The Selfless Act of Breathing (2021). Reviewing it in The Guardian, Michael Donkor acknowledged that its "conceptual concern with the limited routes available for black people to find meaningful release from systemic racism is, without question, important and emotive", while suggesting that the novel is "compromised by a brand of lyricism that distracts rather than illuminates."[14] The Observer noted: "Bola's ear for rhythm and cadence is sharp, and he lets characters soliloquise as if acing a poetry slam, their diction inflected with the street and the pulpit as they riff on cities, black history, police brutality."[15] Litro magazine concluded: "JJ Bola has succeeded in writing a novel that's not only a pleasure to read but is a necessary navigation through our society."[16] The author himself has said: "The first thing I'm hoping for is just empathy. I want the reader to sit with this person and not think about fixing them or saving them."[17]

Bola spent many years as a youth worker, working with young people with behavioural and mental health problems.[2] He currently works for several projects to raise awareness about the human rights situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[4]

Bola is a regular participant at festivals and other events, speaking and performing his work widely within the UK as well as internationally.[6]

JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize

In 2021, the Pontas and JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize was initiated for writers from "Black, ethnic minority, LGBTQ+, and working-class backgrounds", providing mentoring from author Bola in partnership with the Pontas Literary & Film Agency in Spain.[18][19] The joint winners of the inaugural prize were Musih Tedji Xaviere and Bhavika Govil.[20][21]

Publications

Novels
  • No Place to Call Home: Love, Loss, Belonging. Own It!, 2017. ISBN 978-0995458925.
  • The Selfless Act Of Breathing. Dialogue, 2021. ISBN 978-0349702070.[22]

Non-fiction

Poetry
  • Elevate (2012)
  • Daughter of the Sun (2014)
  • Word (2015)
  • Refuge (2018) – a collection, comprising Word, Daughter of the Sun and Elevate

Publications with contributions by Bola
  • Safe: On Black British Men Reclaiming Space. London: Trapeze, 2019. Edited by Derek Owusu. ISBN 978-1409182634. Bola contributes a chapter, "Rapper, Actor, Athlete – Other".[24]

See also
  • Category:Feminist terminology

References
  1. Onwuemezi, Natasha (21 November 2016). "'Very special' tale of belonging and identity to OWN IT!". The Bookseller. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
  2. Barekat, Houman (12 September 2019). "Mask Off by JJ Bola review – masculinity redefined". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
  3. "Literature of Exile: The Refugee Activist Poet J. J. Bola". Global Literature in Libraries Initiative (GLLI). 27 November 2020. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  4. Bausells, Marta; Maeve Shearlaw (16 September 2015). "Poets speak out for refugees: 'No one leaves home, unless home is the mouth of a shark'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
  5. Bola, JJ (7 November 2018). "We are from here, but not from here". Wellcome Collection | Stories. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  6. Mogami, Gaamangwe Joy (11 June 2017). "The Politics of Identity and Belonging: A Dialogue With JJ Bola". Africa in Dialogue. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  7. "No Place To Call Home by JJ Bola". Own It!. 29 January 2018. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  8. Phoenix, Aisha (10 May 2017). "Aisha Phoenix Interviews JJ Bola". The Mechanics Institute. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  9. "JJ Bola". UNHCR. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  10. "JJ Bola". Pontas Agency. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  11. "JJ Bola". Simon & Schuster. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  12. Shah, Sonji. "Mask Off - JJ Bola". Bad Form. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  13. Lemmey, Huw (14 May 2020). "Review – Mask Off: Masculinity Redefined by J J Bola". Red Pepper. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  14. Donkor, Michael (4 November 2021). "The Selfless Act of Breathing by JJ Bola review – an existential roadtrip". The Guardian.
  15. Anderson, Hephzibah (24 October 2021). "The Selfless Act of Breathing by JJ Bola review – a traveller misses connection". The Observer.
  16. Loft, Zadie (3 December 2021). "Book Review: The Selfless Act Of Breathing". Litro. Retrieved 12 November 2022.
  17. Miller, Stuart (16 February 2022). "Why a refugee novelist sent his protagonist on a suicidal American road trip". Los Angeles Times.
  18. "Pontas & JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize". 1 February 2022. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  19. Anderson, Porter (2 February 2021). "Barcelona's Pontas Literary Agency Opens a Mentoring Prize for Authors". Publishing Perspectives. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  20. Bayley, Sian (1 June 2021). "Winners of the inaugural Pontas & J J Bola Emerging Writers Prize announced". The Bookseller. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  21. Ibeh, Chukwuebuka (8 June 2021). "Winners of the 2021 Pontas and JJ Bola Emerging Writers Prize Announced". Brittle Paper. Retrieved 11 November 2022.
  22. Anderson, Hephzibah (24 October 2021). "The Selfless Act of Breathing by JJ Bola review – a traveller misses connection". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 November 2021.
  23. Bola, J. J. (20 September 2019). "this book confronts the harmful myth of modern masculinity". i-D. Retrieved 10 December 2019.
  24. "Free Thinking - The changing image of masculinity - BBC Sounds". www.bbc.co.uk. 6 November 2019. Retrieved 11 January 2020.
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