With a Foreword by Michael Harriot, Shackled Freedom: Black Living in the Modern American South is Ahanu’s meditation on perceptions and preconceived notions about what it means to be a black Southern poet.

Ahanu is an Alumni Nasir Jones Fellow at Harvard’s Hip Hop Archive and Research Institute. He is a Visiting Lecturer at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Ahanu works with several arts organizations and is currently managing a grant-funded initiative as the Rothwell Mellon Program Director for Creative Futures with Carolina Performing Arts.