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A review by ixeliema
Walking Gentry Home: A Memoir of My Foremothers in Verse by Alora Young
5.0
Every single person on the planet should read Alora's incredible words.
My more colorful friends will find these verses profoundly wise and familiar, and my paler complexioned compatriots, especially those who perhaps know only the history taught to them in high school classes, will find themselves walking away from this collection with a greater sense of understanding and compassion for the people they may have otherwise dismissed with words like "slavery ended 200 years ago, get over it."
For every white person who has ever asked me how they're privileged for being white, especially if they were disadvantaged in some other way, such as being poor...I offer you Black Tax and Black Tax Continued...as well as Cannibalism, Present Day, Tennessee. On the other side of the coin, for every young black girl who is wondering if this is it, if all there is to look to in life is pain and fighting, I offer you A Thousand Generations and Convocation. The entire collection is bittersweet, as I find myself loving Monette and Gentry as if they were my own mothers...and knowing how they suffered unbelieveably painful things just for a different skin tone makes me feel riotous rage. Learning the stories of these mothers that are denied to us by history on the whole was an incredibly emotional and extremely rewarding experience...and I can only hope that stories like theirs will never go untold again.
To all who push against the idea that white privilege isn't real, or that things are so easy these days, stop asking for handouts...I insist you take a minute to sit down, shut your mouth, and open your ears to the experiences of those not like yourself. You'll find rather quickly that centuries of generational racial trauma do not go quietly into that good night when echoes of what was done to you and your kin are everywhere, especially in the deep south. If your people were slaughtered like cattle, prevented from advancing socially, adademically, and emotionally, and otherwise 'othered' by any and all American Dreams, you'd be pissed, too.
Particular favorites by Young have to be Black Tax Continued, Athena and Ida, and A Question of Privilege, AP Geography, District 5, Nashville, TN, 2018. As Man and Wife, 1984 also holds a soft spot in my heart as the stepchild of a father who stepped up where the biological dad failed. Almost every poem in this collection brought pinpricks of raw emotion to the corners of my eye, and if this is what future generations will bring to the table, I really think that the kids are alright.
Catch me collecting all of Alora Young's poetry collections like Pokemon cards and yelling about how everyone should do the same.
My more colorful friends will find these verses profoundly wise and familiar, and my paler complexioned compatriots, especially those who perhaps know only the history taught to them in high school classes, will find themselves walking away from this collection with a greater sense of understanding and compassion for the people they may have otherwise dismissed with words like "slavery ended 200 years ago, get over it."
For every white person who has ever asked me how they're privileged for being white, especially if they were disadvantaged in some other way, such as being poor...I offer you Black Tax and Black Tax Continued...as well as Cannibalism, Present Day, Tennessee. On the other side of the coin, for every young black girl who is wondering if this is it, if all there is to look to in life is pain and fighting, I offer you A Thousand Generations and Convocation. The entire collection is bittersweet, as I find myself loving Monette and Gentry as if they were my own mothers...and knowing how they suffered unbelieveably painful things just for a different skin tone makes me feel riotous rage. Learning the stories of these mothers that are denied to us by history on the whole was an incredibly emotional and extremely rewarding experience...and I can only hope that stories like theirs will never go untold again.
To all who push against the idea that white privilege isn't real, or that things are so easy these days, stop asking for handouts...I insist you take a minute to sit down, shut your mouth, and open your ears to the experiences of those not like yourself. You'll find rather quickly that centuries of generational racial trauma do not go quietly into that good night when echoes of what was done to you and your kin are everywhere, especially in the deep south. If your people were slaughtered like cattle, prevented from advancing socially, adademically, and emotionally, and otherwise 'othered' by any and all American Dreams, you'd be pissed, too.
Particular favorites by Young have to be Black Tax Continued, Athena and Ida, and A Question of Privilege, AP Geography, District 5, Nashville, TN, 2018. As Man and Wife, 1984 also holds a soft spot in my heart as the stepchild of a father who stepped up where the biological dad failed. Almost every poem in this collection brought pinpricks of raw emotion to the corners of my eye, and if this is what future generations will bring to the table, I really think that the kids are alright.
Catch me collecting all of Alora Young's poetry collections like Pokemon cards and yelling about how everyone should do the same.