Homie

Black History Month

Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.

Reading Homie is like getting sucker punched by one of your buddies, in that it hurts like hell but you both still have a laugh. This collection flawlessly celebrates all of the beauty and pain, the angst and the tenderness of friendship in all its complexities. Recommended By Haley B., Powells.com

Danez Smith's new book of poems is a banger. It's like if Rihanna was your best friend and she did a song about one of your inside jokes that was actually about the most painful moment of your life but you had to find a way to laugh about it, and so she made it dance. It's that ridiculously good. Recommended By Thomas L., Powells.com

Danez Smith is our president

Homie is Danez Smith's magnificent anthem about the saving grace of friendship. Rooted in the loss of one of Smith's close friends, this book comes out of the search for joy and intimacy within a nation where both can seem scarce and getting scarcer. In poems of rare power and generosity, Smith acknowledges that in a country overrun by violence, xenophobia, and disparity, and in a body defined by race, queerness, and diagnosis, it can be hard to survive, even harder to remember reasons for living. But then the phone lights up, or a shout comes up to the window, and family — blood and chosen — arrives with just the right food and some redemption. Part friendship diary, part bright elegy, part war cry, Homie is the exuberant new book written for Danez and for Danez's friends and for you and for yours.

"A collection as dazzling as it is bighearted....Dynamic, breathtaking, and utterly brilliant, these poems are not only most magnificent weapons but also salves to share and songs to shout at the top of one's lungs. A transcendent collection sure to bolster Smith's status as a poetry icon." Booklist (Starred Review)

"An electrifying, unabashedly queer ode to friendship and community....Smith is a visionary polyglot with a fearless voice." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"Danez Smith is a powerhouse of poetry....Their language is always electric, and Homie is no exception. The ways in which Smith combines syntax, humor, reverence and irreverence are stunning, and this collection of odes is bound to be a widespread poetry favorite." Literary Hub

"[Homie] offers the opportunity to witness 'the miracle of other people's lives' and will challenge you to consider how and why that miracle is dismissed in countless daily acts of racial aggression." Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Danez Smith is the author of Don't Call Us Dead, winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert boy], winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. They live in Minneapolis.