A review by laura_sackton
A Dead Name That Learned How to Live by Golden

I love the blend of photos and poetry in this. It gives the sense that the book is an ode to and celebration of Golden’s ancestors, that the book is not just poems but something bigger, a collection of all the things that have made them. It gives the book a collaborative feel. There is one poem written from the POV of Golden’s father, about trying as a dad, about how hard it is to be a dad, about what they got wrong and right about his trans kid, that blew me away. 

I did not love this collection as a whole—at times it didn't feel long enough, or it didn't spark my language joy organ. But I'm glad I read it. A few of them poems totally wowed me. There is a series of x/y poems, where on one side are words in plain text and on the other side of the page are bracketed words. These poems are quite beautiful—the words, the ideas, the images, about gender and violence and the assumptions made about bodies, about Blackness and getting free and healing.

I love the expansiveness of how Golden thinks about family, the beauty they write about their relatives with, the deep celebration of Blackness and Black families and Black love and the ways those things held them as a kid. This is a collection about the constellation of love and grief and people who’ve shaped them, and less about what has hurt them as a trans person.