Song of my softening

The insightful debut by James explores the body and identity with bracing honesty and directness. Fatness and its accompanying social stigma are central themes but make up only one aspect of a more intricate, intersectional perspective. "When you are fat and queer and female and black/ When no one has any use for you except/ Your otherness// When your otherness is a currency," James writes, laying bare the experience of tokenization and commodification of difference. Many poems ponder the objectification of Black female bodies within a matrix of beauty standards that shift across cultural contexts, from the U.S. to Trinidad to Nigeria, reflected in the speaker's weary address: "Reader,/ I have been picked up, put down and considered, casually and constantly, which is the privilege/ of beauty." James plots a difficult course toward bodily autonomy: "No matter how they/ try to claim you, your body/ will never belong to them. It will/ always be ours." Often transgressive and always enlightening, this provocative collection confronts what it means to see and be seen, to consume and be consumed. (Feb.)

This stunning debut collection from Discovery Prize winner James (following the chapbook Daughter Tongue) offers a broad-ranging examination of the body and everything it can encompass for women, ranging from the traumas of youth and exposure to diet culture, to its role in the complicated dynamics between mothers and daughters, to issue of self-acceptance and sexuality as James explores issues of Black queerness. The collection also meditates on forms of grief, including death and lost loves. "I went to the hardware store for milk and you weren't there/ so I went to the graveyard for eggs/ but just missed you. Then I followed the waterfall/ of your perfume down the railroad track,/ but couldn't lift it" reads one poem, just one fine example of how James is able to capture longing so vividly. VERDICT It's not often that fat women feel such thorough representation of themselves not only in poetry but in any media and not only in the beautiful moments but in the sorrowful ones, ranging throughout life. James does a brilliant job of portraying this and all her themes brilliantly; highly recommended.--Sarah Michaelis