Before whiteness / D.S. Marriott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marriott, D. S., author.

Contributor:

Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

Series:

City Lights spotlight ; no. 21.

City Lights spotlight series ; no. 21

Language:

English

Genre:

Poetry.

Physical Description:

116 pages ; 18 cm.

Place of Publication:

San Francisco : City Lights, [2022]

Summary:

"The 21st volume in the City Lights Spotlight Poetry Series, Before Whiteness is a searing indictment of anti-Black social and political violence by British-Jamaican poet and leading scholar of Afropessimism D.S. Marriott. A book that turns Blackness into a question of reading, seeking to at once destroy and reimagine the various traditions of inscribing and decoding Blackness in poetry, Before Whiteness draws on a sweeping range of cultural references from 19th century German Romantic poet/philosopher Hölderlin to contemporary UK grime rapper Stormzy. Born in Britain but now living in the U.S., Marriott trains his analytical gaze on such grim American subject matter as the Middle Passage of the Atlantic slave trade and the lynching of Melby Dotson in Louisana, yet also finds inspiration in African American poets Stephen Jonas and Bob Kaufman and the artist Kara Walker. Other works find him celebrating fallen poetic comrades like Sean Bonney and Dambudzo Marechera. The book ends with "Another Burning," an ambitious and agonized memorialization of the 2017 Grenfell Tower disaster in London, where an out-of-control fire spread throughout a high-rise building of council flats due to neglect and unsafe materials, resulting in the deaths of 72 poor, largely ethnic minority residents. "Another Burning" is both a mournful elegy for the victims and a stirring rebuke of the structural racism of contemporary UK society that allowed such a preventable and even forewarned-of tragedy to occur. With its necessarily critical transatlantic perspective, Before Whiteness provides poetic resistance to the injustices experienced by people of color in the postcolonial Anglophone world"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: The Ghost of Averages

Lorem Ipsum

Black Sunlight

Greeking

Come Thru

The Monster

The Dream of Melby Dotson

The Dream, Called Lubek

Murking (after Stormzy)

Jonas Runs the Voodoo Down

Hoerenjongetje

The Rest Unfinished: In Dedication to the Young Negress, Kara E. Walker

Nothing Precious Is Scorned

The "Secret" of this Form Itself

Movements, Monuments

Fallen, Rising, a Sack Full of Symbols

Before Whiteness

Goodbye Pork Pie Hat

Clash City Poets

Lester Young by Washington Square

Blue in Bandoe.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Alumni and Friends Memorial Book Fund.

ISBN:

9780872868847

0872868842

OCLC:

1267686894