Metaphor by Any Means Necessary: Destiny O. Birdsong’s Negotiations
Metaphor can make life more bearable, meaningful, or simply comprehensible.
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Posts Tagged: slavery
Our Recognizable, Difficult, Earthly Kingdom: Such Color by Tracy K. Smith
Composition here becomes a process of discernment rather than pure creation.
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Woven Fibers and Broken Threads: Katherine Agyemaa Agard’s of colour
To be imbricated in hundreds of years of colonial violence is to be entangled in colorist logics and stories of loss and belonging that are rarely linear or singular.
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Startling Juxtapositions: Pilot Impostor by James Hannaham
Hannaham reserves his most vivifying language for planes and crashes.
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Reading Whitman While White
It is only by holding Whitman accountable for all of his language that we can also love other parts of his language and poetics.
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Reclaiming the Roots of Self-Care: A Conversation with Nneka M. Okona
Nneka M. Okona discusses her new book, SELF-CARE FOR GRIEF.
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Performing Violence: A Conversation with Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Jocelyn Nicole Johnson discusses her debut story collection, MY MONTICELLO.
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Searching for Who We Want to Be: A Conversation with Trisha R. Thomas
Trisha R. Thomas discusses her new novel, WHAT PASSES AS LOVE.
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The Plane That We Inhabit: A Conversation with Ashley M. Jones
Ashley M. Jones discusses her new poetry collection, REPARATIONS NOW!.
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That Moment of Transition: Talking with Musa Okwonga
Musa Okwonga discusses IN THE END, IT WAS ALL ABOUT LOVE and ONE OF THEM.
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Place, Patois, and a Pinch of Politics: A Conversation with Celeste Mohammed
Celeste Mohammed discusses her debut novel-in-stories, PLEASANTVIEW.
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Black Motherhood as Literary Creation: Talking with Kaitlyn Greenidge
Kaitlyn Greenidge discusses her new novel, LIBERTIE.
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Language Is the Spell: Kathryn Nuernberger’s The Witch of Eye
A compendium of pungent and poignant biographical narratives of numerous so-called witches, The Witch of Eye is difficult to put down.
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Not Looking Away: The State She’s In by Lesley Wheeler
But look at this poet-speaker speaking the unspeakable!
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American, Not Blonde
I was finally going to fit in in this foreign country.
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Identity as a Hall of Mirrors: Descent by Lauren Russell
This book is a marriage of the real world and the imagination, the nexus of nonfiction and fiction.
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The World Is on Fire: Living Weapon by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
A democratic art, the poet says, will take us through. Come November, vote.
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Reclaiming History from the Bigots: Jill Lepore’s This America
History itself is not so conveniently tidy, and neither is this book.
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Suffragette City: The Substance and the Shadow
Isabella decided “to take her freedom into her own hands.”
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A Deeper Narrative: Tongo Eisen-Martin’s Heaven Is All Goodbyes
These are not poems to read quickly, but to return to repeatedly.
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Queering the Southern Gothic: A Conversation with Genevieve Hudson
Genevieve Hudson discusses her debut novel, BOYS OF ALABAMA.
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Masters of Movement: A Conversation with Morgan Jerkins
Morgan Jerkins discusses her new book, WANDERING IN STRANGE LANDS.
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Hybrid by Nature: A Conversation with Tara Campbell
Tara Campbell discusses her new book, POLITICAL AF: A RAGE COLLECTION.
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Cultural Attunement and “Otherness”: A Conversation with Aimee Liu
Aimee Liu discusses her new novel, GLORIOUS BOY.
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Zones of Paradox: A Conversation with Billy-Ray Belcourt
Billy-Ray Belcourt discusses his new book, A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY.
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Dear Daughters
We left because they never gave us back our bodies.
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Arrest Record
A Black boy, no matter how young, was not a child. He was a future criminal.
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Both Scholarly and Poetic: A Conversation with Xandria Phillips
Xandria Phillips discusses their debut full-length collection, HULL.
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Living with Our Ghosts: A Conversation with Maisy Card
Maisy Card discusses her debut novel, THESE GHOSTS ARE FAMILY.
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