Black Girl, Call Home

“Black Girl, Call Home” by Jasmine Mans is an extraordinary collection of modern poetry. Her ability to convey the pain, complexity, and richness of Black, queer American culture is evident throughout the collection. Many of her pieces are sparsely worded but that doesn’t diminish the devastating effect upon the reader. She is direct, often confrontational while simultaneously expressing bone-deep gratitude for those she loves. One of my favorite books of the year.

Jasmine Mans "Black Girl, Call Home" is a stunning, powerful collection of poetry. There was a slow burning build up to each new piece. This collection was like a good pot of gumbo - there was a little bit of everything mixed up in this work and each bite was delicious with a new flavor.

My favorite pieces included but are not limited to "The Light", "Footnotes to Kanye", "The Little Mermaid", "Kill That Nigga Dead", "Sandra's Haiku", "Missing Girls", and "You Took Sundays". This collection has something for every one. So many themes ran through this work and they all resonated on a different level. Mans touches on police brutality, being black in America, being a Black girl in America, being a Black lesbian girl in America, Black family life, pop culture, hip hop, Louisiana roots, rape culture, and so much more.

This is a collection to read and reread because each time you will pick up on a different meaning or interpretation of each piece. I would recommend this collection to fans of Hanif Abdurraqib's "A Fortune for Your Disaster" or Morgan Parker's "Magical Negro".

This poetry collection is breathtaking. Absolutely breathtaking in the way she puts words together and expresses deep emotions and feelings as if they were jotted down on a cocktail napkin. Short or long, in various formats sharing about love and family, or music and Black deaths, she goes everywhere but in focused, tenacious, powerful words.

It's jarring and amazing together and poems separately. I'm in particular love with some related to Michelle Obama and Serena Williams.

This collection got deep into me and I am literally shaking. Each component, whether quote, prose, poem, or one-liner, is a seething brick piling onto your chest until you go to take a breath and can't.
Destined to become a classic.

Jasmine Mans is an exceptional poet, able to turn a stunning phrase AND convey a stunning truth simultaneously. This is a great introduction to poetry for folks who aren't poetically inclined and a hard examination of the current US situation of racial inequities.

Jasmine Mans's poetry is powerful, poignant, and timely. For those looking to educate themselves in the history and reality of the African American experience, this is a beautifully painful place to go. In particular, Mans tells stories of Black women who have been pushed down and forcefully forgotten in this country's past.

I found myself researching certain events and names as I read through the stark and beautiful poems. I was really affected by the story of Sandra Bland, a 28-year-old black woman who was arrested in a traffic stop and was found dead in jail days later. These are the kinds of stories that don't always penetrate mainstream media, and Mans aims to tell those stories in this book.

Highly recommend that you add to your list!

Powerful and visceral reflections on the author’s experiences as a Black, queer woman.

Nothing is off the table in Jasmine Mans’ collection: mother-daughter dynamics, raising black sons, sexism, violence against transwomen, rape, coming out to her mother, Kanye, Whitney, Halle, Henrietta Lacks, Sandra Bland, New Orleans, peoples’ lack of boundaries in their curiosity about lesbian relationships, falling in love, falling out of love...

Because a broken heart
feels like poisoned butterflies
taking their last flutters
right in the pit of your stomach

Thank you to Berkley Publishing and to NetGalley for the electronic ARC.