Breath Better Spent
Living Black Girlhood
-
- $16.99
-
- $16.99
Publisher Description
A Netgalley "Must-Read Books by Black Authors in 2022"
From the award-winning and critically acclaimed author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing comes a new book of narrative in verse that takes a personal and historical look at the experience of Black girlhood.
In Breath Better Spent, DaMaris B. Hill hoists her childhood self onto her shoulders, together taking in the landscape of Black girlhood in America. At a time when Black girls across the country are increasingly vulnerable to unjust violence, unwarranted incarceration, and unnoticed disappearance, Hill chooses to celebrate and protect the girl she carries, using the narrative-in-verse style of her acclaimed book A Bound Woman is a Dangerous Thing to revisit her youth. There, jelly sandals, Double Dutch beats, and chipped nail polish bring the breath of laughter; in adolescence, pomegranate lips, turntables, and love letters to other girls' boyfriends bring the breath of longing. Yet these breaths cannot be taken alone, and as she carries her childhood self through the broader historical space of Black girls in America, Hill is forced to grapple with expression in a space of stereotype, desire in a space of hyper-sexuality, joy in a space of heartache.
Paying homage to prominent Black female figures from Zora Neale Hurston to Whitney Houston and Toni Morrison, Breath Better Spent invites you to walk through this landscape, too, exploring the spaces-both visible and invisible-that Black girls occupy in the national imagination, taking in the communal breath of girlhood, and asking yourself: In a country like America, what does active love and protection of Black girls look like?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hill (A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing) combines in this urgent collection photographs and essays that capture the lives of young Black women and girls past, present, and future. Per Hill's luminous preface, "These poems explore the interior and public lives of Black girls, the visible... and invisible spaces... that Black girls occupy in American culture." She draws on history, memory, and conversations to present a range of perspectives and experiences. Between sparkling homages to famous Black women like Aretha Franklin ("Your voice is/ caramel, lush, wet and warm star-kissed/ sugar around everyone's soul") and poems that proclaim and mourn the loss of missing and murdered Black girls ("You are a missing person./ You, Nevaeh , and your mother are diamond/ reflections in a fancy compact mirror"), Hill situates her own reckoning with Black girlhood. "Little Wonder," she writes in "Continuous Fire (a love poem to a younger self)," "water cheerleader wannabe,/ may I fashion you a throne?/ May I carry you on my shoulders/ as I praise you with my pen?" Hill fulfills this mission, and readers are lucky to be with her in these outstanding pages.
Customer Reviews
Breathtaking!!!
I read this book in less than 24 hours. From the introduction to the acknowledgments it took my breath away. Each section, each poem, each photo told a story. My inner child, that little Black girl, felt seen and heard. Some poems made me cry for my Black girls and others made me feel powerful.