Reviews tagging 'Death'

Homie by Danez Smith

14 reviews

savvylit's review against another edition

emotional reflective fast-paced

4.0

"& how many times have you loved me without my asking? how often have i loved a thing because you loved it? including me"

Homie is a declaration of enduring and joyous love. Smith's deep compassion for their friends is a uniting theme in this structurally playful collection. Smith weaves their own identity as a Black, poz, queer, and nonbinary person through poems that capture how loving & living can be frustrating and beautiful at the same time.
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This was my second read for #transrightsreadathon 2024.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Racism, Racial slurs, Death, Grief, and Suicide

yinflower's review against another edition

dark emotional funny reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Xenophobia, Child death, Suicide, Racism, Death, and Violence

eldritch_horror's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

4.0

I felt bad rating this book a 3.75 at first so I changed it to a 4.0. It doesn't resonate with me as much as BLACK MOVIE did by this same author, and while they do an incredible job at writing most of this comes from my own relationship with poetry. However, I would still tell people to read this book and give it a chance, it's a book I feel a lot of people still should take the time to read even if they don't like it themselves.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Racial slurs, Racism, and Death

Moderate: Gun violence and Classism

fieldofhats's review against another edition

dark emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

3.75

This was not an easy book to finish. It’s less than 100 pages, but it is extremely heavy. Danez Smith is a master poet who knows how to weave humor and dark topics together beautifully, but the heaviness often outweighs the humor in this one. This collection is poignant and relevant, but not wholly enjoyable. That’s not to say this is a bad collection by any means whatsoever — it was just hard to get through. Be thoroughly aware of the trigger warnings for this book before reading.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content, Death, Hate crime, Grief, Gun violence, Homophobia, and Racial slurs

Minor: Suicide, Classism, Transphobia, and Suicidal thoughts

mistercrow's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Minor: Racism, Racial slurs, Death, Police brutality, and Self harm

astralfeline's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing and Sexual content

Moderate: Slavery, Transphobia, Racial slurs, Hate crime, Suicide attempt, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Racism, Homophobia, and Death

Minor: Excrement, Outing, and Violence

lilawsahar's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

Buy it! Read it! If you’re white, use it to develop some empathy! I’m white and my heart grew ten times the size. Off to go buy their other poetry collectives. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Chronic illness, Death, Racism, Hate crime, Mental illness, Grief, and Racial slurs

Minor: Classism, Transphobia, Suicide, Sexual content, Homophobia, Police brutality, Blood, and Gun violence

therainbowshelf's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective tense fast-paced

5.0

Danez Smith’s poetry is reflective of life, and takes a hard look at racism, homophobia, and living with aids. There are a lot of striking lines in this book. I listened to the audio, so although I don’t think I got as much of the poems’ contents, it was fun listening to Danez perform his work. I also appreciated the intro explaining the real title of this collection and why he called it Homie.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Racism, Death, Suicide, Terminal illness, Homophobia, Police brutality, Grief, and Chronic illness

yellow_star's review

emotional reflective medium-paced

3.75

Overall this book is basically Angry Poems, and an aggressive theme. But most of it is fair. Like the line "poeming some men's hands off,  they know what they did" (paraphrase not exact words) is aggressive but fair. There is a poem in the beginning about a whole group beating one kid up though so maybe don't have young kids read this. 

There's also themes of racism, bigotry, etc. There are also the  related slurs. 

The nature poems are so fresh! I love the completely new to me imagery for nature.

The poverty poems are also completely relatable. 

I'm not a huge fan of poems that jump all over the place like a lot of modern literary poetry does, but each poem is usually about some topic and mostly continues the same conversation. There's still a little bit of chaotic unrelated subject changes but very little. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying

Moderate: Physical abuse, Body horror, Drug use, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Blood, Gore, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Violence, Classism, and Murder

Minor: Child death, Confinement, Death, and Slavery

rlgreen91's review against another edition

emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

5.0

What a gorgeous, gorgeous collection of poems.  A dear friend gave this to me for Christmas, and since I had a bit of time between book club selections, I decided to pick it up, with goal of reading a poem a day. I went into it with no expectations, which was a great idea. I was pleasantly surprised and thrilled by the many ways Smith conveyed and depicted friendship and community and grief in the poems.  If I had to pick a favorite, it would probably be "acknowledgements," and "self-portrait as '90s R&B video" was the most fun to read out loud.

Revisiting "fall poem" on this Sunday October evening is the best way to cap off this collection.  I'm already looked forward to the next thing I read by Smith. 5 stars.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs and Cursing

Moderate: Death, Police brutality, Drug use, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Suicide, and Sexual content

Minor: Death of parent and Medical content