Description
The ancestors arise and fly, and the black female body is the 'insurgent sensualist,' hunted but fighting to live and love in the ways it wants and knows best: "I loved being / a black girl but had not yet learned / to play dead . . ."
The tenderness of a father's handwritten notes shadows the collection like a ghost, while the treasured, not-for-sale interiority of a black girl's fountainhead takes over every page. "One yellaw gal with an all-black tongue has gone missing." Finney has composed a new black spiritual, and one of the great voices of our time again stamps her singular sound into the new day.
About the Author
Nikky Finney is the author of four books of poetry, including Head Off & Split (Northwestern University Press, 2011), winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. She is the John H. Bennett, Jr., Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina. Finney has received the Art for Change Fellowship from the Ford Foundation and currently serves as an ambassador for the University of Arizona Poetry Center's Art for Justice Project.
Reviews
"A paean to the culture of African Americans and their history and culture of survival through creativity-in your face, loud, emotional, outrageous truth." -Ed Roberson, author of To See the Earth Before the End of the World
Book Information
ISBN 9780810142015
Author Nikky Finney
Format Hardback
Page Count 256
Imprint Northwestern University Press
Publisher Northwestern University Press
Weight(grams) 776g