Ghost in a black girl's throat : poems

Ghost in a black girl's throat Poems

Khalisa Rae

Book - 2021

"What happens when a Midwestern girl migrates to a haunted Southern town, whose river is a graveyard, whose streets bear the names of southern slave owners? How can she build a home where Confederate symbols strategically stand in the center of town? Can she sage the chilling truths of her ancestors? What will she do to cope with the traumatizing ghostliness of the present-day South? Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat is a heart-wrenching reconciliation and confrontation of the living, breathing ghosts that awaken Black women each day. This collection summons multiple hauntings-ghosts of matriarchs that came before, those that were slain, and those that continue to speak to us, but also those horrors women of color strive to put to re...st. Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat examines the haunting feeling of facing past demons while grappling with sexism, racism, and bigotry. They are all present: ancestral ghosts, societal ghosts, and spiritual, internal hauntings. This book calls out for women to speak their truth in hopes of settling the ghosts or at least being at peace with them"--

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Subjects
American poetry > African American authors.
Poetry.
Genres
Poetry
Published
Pasadena, CA : Red Hen Press [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Khalisa Rae (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
90 pages ; 23 cm
ISBN
9781597098854
  • Fire
  • Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat
  • Body Apology
  • Outside the Canon: Words to Never Use
  • Southern Foreclosures
  • Home-Going Celebration
  • Exit Speech
  • Black Boy Painted Butterfly
  • Collaring Our Native Tongues
  • Mad. Black. Bird.
  • Van Gogh Paints a Hymn
  • Circus Acts: No More Black Girl Magic
  • Making Counterfeit Again
  • American Made
  • Assembly Required for Assimilation
  • Wind and Water
  • Wind Dance
  • Cumulus Clouds
  • Garden Girl Heartbreak
  • Into the Woods
  • Full Moon to Monday
  • All Hallowed Eve
  • Livestock
  • Tea Party at the Cemetery
  • Morning Glory
  • Heirloom
  • Mind of Missing Parts
  • Boil, Burn, Salve
  • Begging the Ground for Flames
  • Wind Watching
  • Mackerel
  • Shucking Oysters
  • Emergence
  • Earth and Spirit
  • Moving Mind
  • Mermaids and Ghost Ships
  • Mahalia Sings to Freedom
  • Buzzwords and Banned Books
  • Epilogue for Banned Books
  • Pastoral Blues
  • Horticulture
  • The Dance Hall of My Mother's Womb
  • Bone Collector
  • Before I Speak to the Matriarchs
  • Skyscraper Women
  • Southern Georgia Libretto I
  • Reclaiming our Phenomenal Bones
  • Southern Louisiana Libretto II
  • Even After the Dust Settles
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Rae considers the intersection of history and modernity in the American South in her provocative debut. "The South will birth a new kind of haunting in your black girl-ness," she warns the reader. These works range widely in form, including traditional lyric poems, list poems, lyric fragments, and found forms, such as the guidebook. As the book unfolds, these pieces become "gadgets that measure moments, that capture time with a broken gasp." Rae's strength lies in blending cultural memory while forging a new narrative all her own. "Not much has changed," Rae reminds in "Buzzwords and Banned Books," "we still omit stories, black-out pages, broken fragments in a forgotten land." In "Black Boy Painted Butterfly" and elsewhere, Rae's lines are musical and lush: "Your back compels us to gawk./ Transfixed, we follow your flutter,/ ballerina. You pirouette across ponds,/ onto petals, symmetric, angles etched/ in your skin, crimson splatters vibrant." Readers will be taken by the sometimes dangerous world Rae conjures. (Apr.)

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