Love Child's Hotbed Of Occasional Poetry: Poems & Artifacts

"In the tradition of Toni Morrison’s Black Book, this collection creates meaning through juxtaposition of text, images and historical artifacts. Consider the quotation of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 1844 statement “the sugar they raised was excellent – nobody tasted blood on it,” which erases the enslaved Black body as a site of white violence on sugar cane plantations; this is juxtaposed with an exclamation from Sandra Bland in 2014 – “Good morning, my beautiful kings and queens!” – whose own Black body became a site for white violence and embodies the white violence toward Black bodies that is off-screen in Emerson’s quote. Nikky Finney explores the presence of anti-Black violence embedded within American cultural norms as well as the Black love that sustains throughout."