Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat
Critic Reviews
Great
Based on 4 reviews on
Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat is an honest incantation and a forthright song to women of color grappling with the ever-present horrors and histories of the South.
Book Details
- Publisher: Red Hen Press
- Publish Date: Apr 12nd, 2021
- Pages: 96
- Language: English
- Dimensions: 8.80in - 5.80in - 0.40in - 0.30lb
- EAN: 9781597098854
- Categories: • American - African American & Black• LGBTQ+• Subjects & Themes - Death, Grief, Loss
About the Author
Khalisa Rae is a poet, queer rights activist, journalist, and educator in Durham, North Carolina, and a graduate of the Queens University MFA program. Her chapbook, Real Girls Have Real Problems, was published in 2012, and her recent work has been seen in PANK, Sundog Lit, Crab Fat, Damaged Goods Press, Red Room Poetry's New Shoots poetry anthology, Glass Poetry, TERSE., Luna Luna, The Hellebore, Homology Lit, Dancing Bear Books: WOMXN Anthology, Tishman Review, and Obsidian, among others. She was a Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize finalist and a winner of the Fem Lit Magazine Contest, Voicemail Poetry Contest, White Stag Publishing Contest, and Bright Wings Poetry Contest. She is Managing Equity and Inclusion Editor of Carve Magazine and Consulting Poetry Editor for Kissing Dynamite. Unlearning Eden is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing in Summer 2021. She is currently the Writing Center Director at Shaw University and the newest writer for NBC-BLK and Black Girl Nerds.
Critics’ reviews
Praise for this book
"If storytelling in the griot's hands is a form of resistance, then Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat is a form of control. Khalisa Rae's poetics are unbreakable glass knives that own uncharted and unmarked underground burrows, providing refuge for righteous indignation.
Unapologetic, slippery, but cautious language weaves inside, over, and under the remnants of sacrifice and atonement. We recoil to remember that our ancestral mothers once had a voice and now our voices are our bodies . . . 'And that's what they will come / for first-the throat.'
Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat pursues agency, selfhood, and disturbing meditations on inhumanity. These poems deliver truth and rage with the precision of a visionary heart and the rancid tears of a poisoned ghost.
This powerful collection bears witness to the fraught overlap between women's bodies and minds. Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat reframes the Black body politic as sacrament, benediction, delicacy, and tenderness.
These verses are timeless refrains sizzling on parched tongues. All praises for the testament of these poems that bring a full communion of blessed assurances to wise women daring oceans to erase our footprints and to wild girls chasing winds that steal the scent of herstory." --Jaki Shelton Green, author of I Want to Undie You
"Ghosts in a Black Girl's Throat resurrects the ancestral spirits of the not-so-distant past. In the poems of Khalisa Rae, ghosts become guardians--protectors of black healing, black truth, and black power. They live in the boldness of 'Counterfeit, ' as chants that proclaim, 'This black be authentic. This black be original. This melanated music be off the market.' They live in the graces of 'Body Apology, ' as roots that require nurture--bodies to be 'planted, ' not 'plucked.' They live in the lands of 'Our Pastoral Blues'--stolen, appropriated, 'broken' but 'locked in formation, weaving.'
Our hauntings, our ghosts, our pain--the deepest of hues, heavy and harrowing--live as we do in the here and now, awaiting rest. Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat honors the dead as the living, speaking new life into all that weighs on black women--by freeing the voices of those who have been silenced, bringing peace to the restless who are powerless no more." --Denise Nichole Andrews, Editor in Chief, The Hellebore Press, and Founder, HUES Foundation
"Rae considers the intersection of history and modernity in the American South in her provocative debut. Readers will be taken by the sometimes dangerous world Rae conjures." --Publishers Weekly
"The title of this blew me away instantly. For people who may struggle with poetry, Rae's gift of using words to visualize the history of trauma that Black womanhood entails will leave a lasting impression on you. Rae takes readers on a journey on the different issues, conversations and roadblocks that Black women encounter throughout their lives." --Book Riot
"Khalisa Rae is one of those electrifying speakers you hear about. There's just something riveting about her work on and off the page." --The Poetry Question
"Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat, the stunning debut poetry collection by Khalisa Rae, captures the trauma and triumph of Blac