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alymiwasaa's review against another edition
5.0
amazing collection!! i love Black people and being Black and i will always love Black people and being Black tbh ……… this is a such a beautifully crafted celebration of Blackness, an ode to Black joy and you need to read it now !!!!!! favourite poems: my granddaddy sees the streets, conceal, my mother’s hands, aubade for the whole hood, imagine, and FINNA, of course!
vivandbooks's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
Took me a minute to get into but I thought this was superb. Playful. Powerful. I’ll come back to this one.
meemzter's review against another edition
4.0
Ironically I picked up Finna because I wanted a quick read. What could be quicker than a notebook-thin poetry collection? But Nate Marshall's poems were weightier than a quick read would allow for, and I sometimes would put this collection down after reading a single poem, feeling like I owed it a little more time.
If Finna was a surprise for how each poem demanded my full attention, it was also a surprise in how much the content related to my life as a linguist. There are more than a handful of poems that I am tempted to recommend for inclusion in our sociolinguistics course. Nate Marshall uses "finna" as a gateway to discuss linguistic discrimination, code-switching, and dialect. Many of these poems are celebrations of Black language and Black linguistic innovation.
An excellent collection of poems. It ended up not being a quick read, but it was assuredly a good one.
If Finna was a surprise for how each poem demanded my full attention, it was also a surprise in how much the content related to my life as a linguist. There are more than a handful of poems that I am tempted to recommend for inclusion in our sociolinguistics course. Nate Marshall uses "finna" as a gateway to discuss linguistic discrimination, code-switching, and dialect. Many of these poems are celebrations of Black language and Black linguistic innovation.
An excellent collection of poems. It ended up not being a quick read, but it was assuredly a good one.
readmoreyall's review against another edition
5.0
I would read this with 11/12 graders due to language but you could use many of these poems in the classroom, Marshall has a way of inviting you in to his poems without sacrificing the authenticity that rings in them.
For example, I am a white lady in Florida. I do not know every slang word he references when speaking of Chicago, but I can appreciate the poem and realize that I am not the intended audience for every poem. I think this collection will speak to many young Black students in ways that others texts will not.
For example, I am a white lady in Florida. I do not know every slang word he references when speaking of Chicago, but I can appreciate the poem and realize that I am not the intended audience for every poem. I think this collection will speak to many young Black students in ways that others texts will not.
vtlism's review against another edition
reflective
2.5
I liked these when I heard the author read, but here I wasn't into it for subjective reasons