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greenlivingaudioworm's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
sad
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief, Slavery, Violence, Colonisation, Death, Police brutality, and Racism
michaelion's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
Oh yeah, this book is goonna go down in history for, at the very least, almost perfectly capturing the feelings we had during the moments we lived through between November 2019 and August 2021. I'm always a sucker for time travel in movies and tv, but mixing the distant past with the present? More than that, using the direct words of the past as if they were said in the present?! Future historians, it's all here. It's all there. It's all real. It made me uncomfortable a couple times but that's because the wound is still fresh. As said in some of the poems, it's still ongoing. I'm sure I'll read this again in 10 20 30 60 years with a familiar hindsight and vague rememberance, and probably feel as sick to my stomach as I feel now. But, not a bad sick. A sad sick. Mourning sickness. We'll never not mourn, even if we forget. But with this book at least a part of us will always remember.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Police brutality, Death, Medical content, Racism, Confinement, Grief, Hate crime, Medical trauma, and Xenophobia
thereadingnurse2021's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
fast-paced
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Racism, Slavery, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, and Police brutality
Moderate: Chronic illness, Classism, Mass/school shootings, Colonisation, and Medical trauma
There are many content warnings for this set of poems, but that is because it is a cry for change. How can we ever make the world a better place if we do not first confront the wrongs that have been put into it? Yes, this text hurts. Yes, it will make you angry. But that’s because it’s supposed to. It is meant to inspire action.maple_dove's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.0
The "Spanish" influenza did not originate in Spain. In fact, the first recorded case was in the United States--in Kansas on March 9, 1918 (bewareth March). But because Spain was neutral in World War I, it did not censor reports of the disease to the public. (pg. 81)
To tell the truth, then, is to risk being remembered by its fiction. Countless countries laid blame to one another. What the US called the Spanish influenza, Spain called the French flu, or Naples Soldier. What Germans dubbed the Russian Pest, the Russians called the Chinese flu. (pg. 81-82)
It's said that ignorance is bliss.
Ignorance is this: a vine hat sneaks up a tree, killing not by poison, but by blocking out its light. (pg. 82)
The Tribune reporter Henry M. Hyde wrote that Black people "are compelled to live crowded in dark and unsanitary room; they are surrounded by constant temptations in the way of widespread saloons and other worse resorts." (pg. 83-84)
The oppressor will always say the oppressed want their overcrowded cage, cozy & comforting as it is; the master will claim that the slaves' chains were understood, good, all right, okay--that is to say, not chains at all. (pg. 84)
We politely asked the white lady behind us
If she could please take the next lift
To continue social distancing.
Her face flared up like a cross in the night.
Are you kidding me? she yelled,
Like we'd just declared
Elevators for us only
Or Yous must enter from the back
Or We have the right to refuse
Humanity to anyone.
Suddenly it struck us:
Why it's so pertubing for privileged groups to follow restrictions of place & personhood.
Doing so means for once wearing the chains their power has shackled on the rest of us.
It is to surrender the one difference that kept them separate & thus superior. (Pg. 143-144)
Some were asked to walk a fraction / of our exclusion for a year & it almost destroyed all they thought they were. Yet here we are. Still walking, still kept.
To be kept to the edges of existence is the Inheritance of the marginalized. (Pg. 145)
For what does the Karen carry but her dwindling power, dying and desperate? Dangerous & dangling like a gun hung from a tongue? (Pg. 145)
There is more than one hue of haunting.
We want to believe that
What we care for can keep.
We want to believe.
The truth is, we are one nation, under ghosts.
The truth is, we are one nation, under fraud.
Tell us, honestly:
Will we ever be who we say. (pg. 166-167)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism
Minor: Colonisation and Death
I forgot about listing content warningslexa's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
slow-paced
3.75
Beautifully narrated by the author. The parts in the middle (historical) dragged a bit and we’re hard to piece together, but I enjoyed many of the other poems. I went into this book without knowing much about it and wasn’t quite prepared for all the pandemic content. But it was overall good.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Grief, Police brutality, and Racism
COVID-19 pandemicthebakerbookworm's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
I read these poems slowly, just a few every day, and I highly recommend. I feel like usually I’m rushing through books, trying to read as much as possible; it was so nice to just take it slow with this one and really absorb the poems.
Touching on ideas of grief, memory, and identity, these poems also dig in to collective trauma, and what it’s like to experience tragedy together. She uses letters from history to reflect on present-day events, and even the formatting of her words have meaning (for example, the words of one poem form an image of a whale).
Honestly, my words can’t do these poems justice, so I’m just gonna say—even if you don’t usually read poetry, there’s something here for you. I recommend for anyone who needs some reflection on the past two years.
Touching on ideas of grief, memory, and identity, these poems also dig in to collective trauma, and what it’s like to experience tragedy together. She uses letters from history to reflect on present-day events, and even the formatting of her words have meaning (for example, the words of one poem form an image of a whale).
Honestly, my words can’t do these poems justice, so I’m just gonna say—even if you don’t usually read poetry, there’s something here for you. I recommend for anyone who needs some reflection on the past two years.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Grief, Violence, Death, Racism, and War
anniereads221's review against another edition
emotional
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Classism, Death, Police brutality, Grief, Violence, and Racism
aqtbenz's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
4.25
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism, Death, and War
kelseyleigh_h's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death and Racism
ajf1774's review against another edition
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
I am admittedly dense about poetry but man, I loved this. My guess is that it will be studied in schools in years to come. It so perfectly encapsulates these past few years of pandemic and revolution.
Content Warnings
Minor: Death and Racism
The pandemic and other relevant topics of the past few years are mentioned- I wouldn’t let it stop you from reading!