Rashid Johnson: Heart Turned Inside Out Poems

An intimate collaboration between mother and son, bringing together poems by Cheryl Johnson-Odim and drawings by her son, the acclaimed American artist Rashid Johnson.

Poems by Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Rashid Johnson’s mother, are accompanied here by a selection of Johnson’s drawings and a far-ranging conversation between mother and son.

The book is based on an updated version of Johnson-Odim’s Other Women Before Me—first published in 1985, the year Rashid turned eight years old. In 2022, Johnson presented the stapled pamphlet—along with titles by the likes of Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Claudia Rankine and Sylvia Plath—in a reading area accompanying his exhibition ‘Sodade’ at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, where the artwork featured on the cover of this publication was also on view.