(V.)
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Black Ocean
Published:17th Aug '17
Currently unavailable, our supplier has not provided us a restock date
In 1974, when Ntozake Shange first released the cannon of Black girl magic known as For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, her opening stanza was a call to all of us.
“somebody / anybody
sing a black girl's song
bring her out
to know herself …”
This book is answer to that call. Anastacia-Reneé’s words frame so many questions: what is sacred, what is beauty, what is tragedy, what rites of passage have we endured to be initiated into the complexities of our humanity? These poems read like rituals, invoking ancestors and Becky alike in a nuanced honest reflection of this time in life. These poems are stories of blackness, of queerness, of womanhood, and of all the identities we hold externally and internally that create the tapestry of who we are and who we want to be.
“Anastacia-Reneé’s (v.) broils the alphabet with accents of Zora and bobby pins and tangled braids; she is busy here melding a blackgirl womansong with a backbeat of black jesus and barbie heads; she is weaving a ghosted blues of cop cars and sparrow eyes; she is translating a language of pain to a semaphore of power. Open these pages and 'un-fly yourself/ upward to the moonlight/ christen your feet/ within a wrecked nest...' and witness a unique voice that has come into its own.” —Tyehimba Jess, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize
ISBN: 9781939568342
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 204g
134 pages