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drehillart 's review for:

Black Girl You Are Atlas by Renée Watson
5.0
challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted reflective sad fast-paced

Renée Watson's Black Girl You Are Atlas feels like an offering to Blackness, womanhood, and the assault on it by the world and all its workings. Watson examines the intersections of what it means to be Black, woman, and to have the weight of a world not asked for placed upon one's shoulders; to be forced to bear the shape and stress of it without rest or respite. My god, does Watson write truth and life into these experiences with these poems. Listening to the audio version was an incredibly pleasurable experience, but I feel I will need to read this collection again, probably physically so I can mark and notate.

This is definitely one of those collections that I will recommend to any and everyone. It's a quick enough read that you can probably ingest it in one sitting, but a poignant and powerful enough one, that you'll likely be digesting and revisiting it for several days after.