Synopses & Reviews
In 1974, when Ntozake Shange first released the cannon of Black girl magic known as For colored girls who have considered suicide when the rainbow is enuf, her opening stanza was a call to all of us.
"somebody/ anybody
sing a black girl's song
bring her out
to know herself …"
This book is answer to that call.
What is sacred, what is beauty, what is tragedy, what rites of passage have we endured to be initiated into the complexities of our humanity? Anastacia-Reneé’s words frame so many questions, read like ritual, read like nursery rhymes, invoke ancestors and Becky alike in a nuanced honest reflection of this time in life.
Using a reimagined alphabet, Anastacia-Reneé sets about taking on everything from love to cancer, monsters, growing up, growing into our bodies, and the ways in which even our bodies are not our own. Her words define and redefine, explore hidden truths and expose the lies we are raised with.
These poems are stories of blackness, of queerness, of womanhood and the combination of all the identities we hold externally and internally that create the tapestry of who we are and who we want to be.
Review
"Anastacia-Reneé's (v.) broils the alphabet with accents of Zora and bobby pins and tangled braids; she is busy here melding a blackgirl womansong with a backbeat of black jesus and barbie heads; she is weaving a ghosted blues of cop cars and sparrow eyes; she is translating a language of pain to a semaphore of power. Open these pages and un-fly yourself/ upward to the moonlight/ christen your feet/ within a wrecked nest ... and witness a unique voice that has come into its own."
Tyehimba Jess, winner of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize
Review
"The titles alone suggest the inventiveness of this terrific new book: "An Incomplete Inventory of What You Are Made of," "Essay Test Questions," "Psalms from a 16-Year-Old’s Life Bible." The poems of Anastacia-Reneé synthesize voice and body; prayer and meditation; politics and play; love and sexuality. Even poetic form is synthesized with monologues, glossaries, prose, and fragments. The lyrical, conceptual and formal experiments of (v.) are daring and breathtaking. This is a wonderful collection." Terrance Hayes, winner of the 2010 National Book Award
About the Author
Anastacia-Reneé is the Writer-in-Residence at Hugo House, workshop facilitator and multivalent performance artist. Along with (v.), her books Forget It (Black Radish Books) and Answer(Me) (Winged City Chapbooks-Argus Press) are forthcoming in 2017.