behind god's eyes (2024)

"a meditation on what it means to be trans-agender and holy."

COMING SOON!

a modest mahogany table (2024)

Available here: https://www.kithbooks.com/shop...

Thokozani lures us in on a love story centered, simply, around a modest mahogany table. While this modest mahogany table, in its endearment, reprises its role as the main character, it's Thokozani's words and the way they fold the love letters suspended between them and their lover that take centre stage and are the true stars of the show. And us as the audience, remain forever moved, falling in love with them as they fall in love with each other.

-Nique Sithole, poet

Agender Daydreams (2022)
Available here: https://gutslutpress.com/produ...

To call this book life-changing would still be an understatement. Agender Daydreams is the first thing that made me start to grapple with the concept of agenderness on a more personal level. As a non-binary person, I still struggled to find home in a sea of labels and identities which never seemed like the right fit. Then came Thokozani, generous and unwavering, with/in their ocean of agenderness, and adorned by a series of essays equal parts technical and ethereal. And just like that, I discovered I, too, am agender.

In this book, Thokozani does not work for the world around us; rather, the world works for Thokozani. Throughout this realm of paper, ink, and dreamy innards, acknowledgment of the rest is there, but the author's voice is a light that guides us and prevents us from falling back into the muddled and distraught places from whence we came. That is only one of many ways in which this gem of a book (even in a whirlwind of dystopia, pop culture, queerness, the inevitable politicization of Black and Brown bodies in the current societal landscape, flailing concepts of the self, and misconceptions of the erotic), Agender Daydreams, is wonderfully bold, kind, introspective, and vulnerable. In some ways, it's a monument to the author (and others like them) as a splendid, entire, and beautiful self. In others, it's a desperately-needed hug in a world designed to make lost, lonely, and deeply disheartened creatures out of those of us who fail to conform to the laws set forth by the gender binary and its corresponding patriarchal whiteness...

And through it all, Thokozani remains eclectic.

- Ami J. Sanghvi, Co-Founder of Gutslut Press

The Sunflower Faces East at Dawn (2022)

BOOK NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE***

The writing of Thokozani Mbwana holds a softness and truth much needed in a world that relentlessly works to convince Black trans and queer people, that we are undeserving of these deeds. This collection of poems is a reminder of the inherent transformative power that words can have, if they are spoken with careful intention. The vivid and bright sunflower imagery invites us as readers to visualize our own growth and the many possibilities of slowly becoming who we dream ourselves to be. Each poem can be read as a manifestation of self-love and collective-care, while at the same time speaking to the experiences of violence that preceded the need for a deeper knowing and understanding of the self and the collective. The Sunflower Faces East At Dawn is an offering to everyone who knows the strenuous work of self-acceptance, -love and perseverance. It is a tender hug, an affirmation and a reflection of the beauty that exists within, no matter how hard it might be to find it on days, when the lies we have been told about ourselves threaten to suffocate the last glimpse of hope for a blooming future

.- Jean Foncé, poet