There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé
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4.3 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Publishers Weekly's Ten Best Poetry Collections of Spring
A Most Anticipated book at Buzzfeed, NYLON, and Bustle
"This is a marvelous book. See for yourself. Morgan Parker is a fearlessly forward and forward-thinking literary star." —Terrance Hayes
There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé uses political and pop-cultural references as a framework to explore 21st century black American womanhood and its complexities: performance, depression, isolation, exoticism, racism, femininity, and politics. The poems weave between personal narrative and pop-cultural criticism, examining and confronting modern media, consumption, feminism, and Blackness. This collection explores femininity and race in the contemporary American political climate, folding in references from jazz standards, visual art, personal family history, and Hip Hop. The voice of this book is a multifarious one: writing and rewriting bodies, stories, and histories of the past, as well as uttering and bearing witness to the truth of the present, and actively probing toward a new self, an actualized self. This is a book at the intersections of mythology and sorrow, of vulnerability and posturing, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Employing fierce language and eschewing fear of unflattering light, Parker (Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night) pays homage to the deep roots and collective wisdom of black womanhood. In "13 Ways of Looking at a Black Girl," Parker reflects the rippling noise facilitated by patriarchy and white supremacy. Her word choices "sex," "sassy," "low-income," "mean," "exotic," etc. emphasize the way that black women are dehumanized and objectified through language. It's a representative example of Parker's vision of how a woman's identity can be shaped by the labels forced upon her. In "Freaky Friday Starring Beyonc and Lady Gaga," the two pop stars are posed not as adversaries but as host and parasite; Lady Gaga becomes a metaphor for white supremacy's theft of black culture and its compulsion to discredit black genius. Parker writes, "I'd miss my booty/ in your butt/ would hate/ to reach back/ and find history/ borrowed not branded." She also examines self-doubt in the roiling poem "The President's Wife," wondering "What does beautiful cost do I afford it/ Do I roll off the tongue/ Is America going to be sick." Parker's poems are as flame-forged as a chain locked around soft ankles.
