The term “Sankofa,” from the Twi language of Ghana, teaches the power of gathering from the past the best of what it has to teach us and carrying it into the present to help create a better future. DeVonne (Dancing in the Lyrics) exemplifies that spirit in her latest collection, which with clear eyes and aching heart digs deeply into centuries of the Black American experience, cataloging a history of enslavement, injustice, and discrimination in spare lines of rare clarity and power. “Your mind’s sweet peace / might erupt to recount vile acts of indecency,” she writes in an early poem, about the pain of facing a past (and present) in which, as another poem puts it, “black bodies burned / black bodies yoked / black bodies wrenched at the end of a rope.” Her mission, though, is clear: “I’ll broadcast the wrongs / to lift my race,” she writes in “I’ll Ride Like Rosa,” a five-stanza reminder of the courage it takes to claim one’s power and create change.
Throughout this potent, often searing volume—which offers occasional short prose pieces in addition to its crisp verse—DeVonne faces the horrors that have been visited upon Black bodies and lives, from the slave trade to mass incarceration, the poisoned water of Flint, Michigan, the names of Black men and women killed by police, to the white fear that enables police brutality. One powerful piece lays bare the subtext of many “911 Calls”: “His skin is too black. / His nose is too wide. / His frame is too large. / His stance emits pride.”
The approach is political, cultural, and personal, as DeVonne balances her historical reckoning with the everyday trials of “working while black in an office / where pay, praises, and promotions rain / on men and women with snowy skin.” Still, a rousing spirit ultimately lifts the collection, as DeVonne celebrates heroes, breakthroughs, and reminds America itself “When I rise / you rise.”
Takeaway: A searing and ultimately rousing collection of poems about the Black American experience.
Great for fans of: Asiya Wadud, ‘Gbenga Adeoba.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A
