Black Girl, Call Home
(Libby/OverDrive eAudiobook)

Through concise and eloquent verse, spoken-word poet Mans addresses a variety of timely and poignant topics in this excellent collection. Early on, the theme of home is explored in tones both observational and acutely personal. The strongest poems gathered here feature mothers and mother figures imbued with attributes that are both deeply human and preternaturally close to the divine: "Separating cloth / by color, / making sure / nothing bled, / onto anything else, / stretching pork / across seven days, / because even / poverty / knows ritual. / Baptizing Black babies / in bathtubs / of hand-me-down water, / one, after / another." The book continues with powerful, succinct lyrics that explore a wealth of resonant themes, giving voice to the girls mentioned in "Didn't Feel Like Winning": "Those girls don't have faces. / They are footnotes / relapsing in the margins / of poems." Delving into heartbreak, community, family, race, queer identity, sexual violence, feminism, and celebrity (including the blistering "Footnotes for Kanye West" and an astounding elegy for Whitney Houston), Mans' poems are startling and unforgettable.

Through concise and eloquent verse, spoken-word poet Mans addresses a variety of timely and poignant topics in this excellent collection. Early on, the theme of home is explored in tones both observational and acutely personal. The strongest poems gathered here feature mothers and mother figures imbued with attributes that are both deeply human and preternaturally close to the divine: Separating cloth / by color, / making sure / nothing bled, / onto anything else, / stretching pork / across seven days, / because even / poverty / knows ritual. / Baptizing Black babies / in bathtubs / of hand-me-down water, / one, after / another. The book continues with powerful, succinct lyrics that explore a wealth of resonant themes, giving voice to the girls mentioned in "Didn't Feel Like Winning": Those girls don't have faces. / They are footnotes / relapsing in the margins / of poems. Delving into heartbreak, community, family, race, queer identity, sexual violence, feminism, and celebrity (including the blistering "Footnotes for Kanye West" and an astounding elegy for Whitney Houston), Mans' poems are startling and unforgettable. Copyright 2021 Booklist Reviews.

Mans (Chalk Outlines of Snow Angels) reframes the classic bildungsroman as a book-length poem sequence in this bold take on race, gender, and sexuality. Gorgeously precise in their diction, these poems span a range of forms, including lists, lyric strophes, aphorisms, and found language, and are unified by a shared investment in posing complex sociopolitical questions through deceptively simple personal narratives. For example, in "Momma Said Dyke at the Kitchen Table," she writes: "Momma said/ so you gonna be a dyke now?// As if she meant to say,/ don't you know/ how hard it already is." Like many poems in the book, these lines call attention to structures of privilege and oppression within the Black community. Mans investigates the sources of division within historically marginalized groups with an emphasis on toxic masculinity: "I've never seen my father cry/ or speak of his mother's death./ He doesn't talk about his brother,/ the one that passed away." Mans refuses binary distinctions, revealing that the ways society thinks of masculine power proves as harmful to men as it does to women. This is a timely and powerful book.