2022 NAACP Image Award Winner
Crystal Wilkinson combines a deep love for her rural roots with a passion for language and storytelling in this compelling collection of poetry and prose about girlhood, racism, and political awakening, imbued with vivid imagery of growing up in Southern Appalachia. In Perfect Black, the acclaimed writer muses on such topics as motherhood, the politics of her Black body, lost fathers, mental illness, sexual abuse, and religion. It is a captivating conversation about life, love, loss, and pain, interwoven with striking illustrations by her long-time partner, Ronald W. Davis.
Table of Content
1. Foreword by Nikky Finney
2. Section 1
3. Terrain
4. Baptism (Flatwoods, Kentucky, 1972)
5. Cousin
6. Black Rapunzel
7. Asking about My Mother
8. The Water Witch on Salvation
9. The Water Witch on Invasion
10. The Water Witch on Reading
11. O Tobacco
12. The Visit
13. Dig If You Will the Picture
14. Slow Dance
15. The Creek
16. Section 2
17. My Father Was a City
18. Beyond the White Canvas
19. August 9, 1974
20. Wet Nurse
21. The Bath
22. Dropsy
23. Death March
24. Dear Johnny P
25. Mother’s Day
26. Bones
27. Ole Fashioned
28. Black Farmer
29. Press
30. Dirge
31. Black Body
32. A Meditation on Grief
33. On Being Country
34. Section 3
35. Bloodroot
36. Kitchen Ghosts
37. Snow Falls Like a Scorned Woman’s Tears
38. Black & Fat & Perfect
39. Witness
40. Coming of Age
41. Dance
42. Homestead
43. Heritage
44. Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts
45. Motherland
46. Winter
47. Notes & Acknowledgements
About the author
Nikky Finney is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets and the John H. Bennett, Jr., Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina. She edited Black Poets Lean South and authored On Wings Made of Gauze, Rice, The World Is Round, Head Off & Split (winner of the 2011 National Book Award for Poetry), and Love Child’s Hotbed of Occasional Poetry. Finney’s work, including her now legendary National Book Award acceptance speech, is on display in the inaugural exhibition of the African American Museum of History and Culture in Washington, D.C.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
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