My Account Log in

1 option

Perfect black / Crystal Wilkinson ; illustrated by Ronald W. Davis ; foreword by Nikky Finney.

Van Pelt Library PS3573.I44184 P47 2021
Loading location information...

Available This item is available for access.

Log in to request item
Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Wilkinson, Crystal, author.
Contributor:
Davis, Ronald W., 1967- illustrator.
Finney, Nikky, writer of foreword.
Language:
English
Genre:
Poetry.
Physical Description:
xiii, 96 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Place of Publication:
Lexington, Kentucky : University Press of Kentucky, [2021]
Summary:
"From the foreword: "In Perfect Black, Crystal Wilkinson walks us back down the road she first walked as a girl, wanders us through the trees that lined the road where she grew up, where her sensibilities as a woman and a writer were first laid bare. In one of the first poems that opens the collection she is a woman looking back on her life, on the soil and mountains that first stamped the particular sound of her voice and she is deeply inquisitive about how it all fell into place: "The map of me can't be all hills & mountains even though I've been country all my life. The twang in my voice has moved downhill to the flat land a time or two." Perfect Black is a book of poems and legends about ancestry, culture, and the terrain of a Black girl becoming. It is a narrow and spacious terrain that enters the bloodstream of this black writing girl's body early. It is a country that she never truly exits even though different zip codes continue to fly through her wild, wondrous, winding life. We read and we hold on too.""-- Provided by publisher.
Contents:
Machine generated contents note: I. Terrain
Baptism (Flatwoods, Kentucky, 1972)
Cousin
Black Rapunzel
Asking about My Mother
The Water Witch on Salvation
The Water Witch on Invasion
The Water Witch on Reading
O Tobacco
The Visit
Dig If You Will the Picture
Slow Dance
The Creek
II. My Father Was a City
Beyond the White Canvas
August 9, 1974
Wet Nurse
The Bath
Dropsy
Death March
Dear Johnny P
Mother's Day
Bones
Ole Fashioned
Black Farmer
Press
Dirge
Black Body
A Meditation on Grief
On Being Country
III. Bloodroot
Kitchen Ghosts
Snow Falls like a Scorned Woman's Tears
Black & Fat & Perfect
Witness
Coming of Age
Dance
Homestead
Heritage
Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts
Motherland
Winter.
Notes:
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Awards Outstanding Literary Work - Poetry, Winner, 2022
ISBN:
9780813151151
0813151155
9780813151168
0813151163
OCLC:
1233165115

The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.

Find

Home Release notes

My Account

Shelf Request an item Bookmarks Fines and fees Settings

Guides

Using the Find catalog Using Articles+ Using your account