Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
To Be Named Something Else

To Be Named Something Else

Phenix, Shaina

Paperback

Series: Miller Williams Poetry Prize

General Poetry

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 1682262286
ISBN13: 9781682262283
Publisher: University of Arkansas Press
Published: Apr 28 2023
Pages: 110
Weight: 0.65
Height: 0.32 Width: 6.93 Depth: 8.90
Language: English

Named one of New York Public Library's Best Books, 2023

Winner, 2023 Miller Williams Poetry Prize

To Be Named Something Else is a high-spirited celebration of Black matriarchy and lineage--both familial and literary. Centering the coming-of-age of Black femmes in Harlem, Shaina Phenix's debut collection, in the words of series judge Patricia Smith: enlivens the everyday--the everyday miraculous, the everyday hallelujah, the numbing everyday love, the everyday risk of just being Black and living. There is absolutely nowhere these poems aren't--we're dancing and sweating through our clothes, terminating a pregnancy in a chilled room of white and silver, finally gettin' those brows threaded and nails did, practicing gettin' the Holy Ghost, sending folks to their rest, having babies, listening carefully to the lessons of elders, and sometimes even talking back. . . . To Be Named Something Else is a book of reason and reckoning, substance and shadow. It's tender and wide-aloud and just about everything we need right now, when both reason and reckoning are in such woefully short supply. Phenix's full-throated poetry, with its superlative combination of formalism and funk, is assuredly something else.

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