Don't Call Us Dead

Description:

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality--the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood--and a diagnosis of HIV positive. Some of us are killed / in pieces, Smith writes, some of us all at once. Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America--Dear White America--where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.

subjects: American poetry,  Poetry (poetic works by one author),  LGBTQ HIV/AIDS,  LGBTQ poetry,  African American men,  Poetry,  Violence against,  HIV-positive men,  Gay men,  Transgender people,  Gay erotic poetry,  Spoken word poetry,  African Americans,  HIV infections,  Medicine in literature,  HIV Infections,  Male Homosexuality,  Transgender Persons,  Medicine in Literature,  Poets,  Hommes noirs américains,  Poésie,  Violence envers,  Hommes séropositifs,  Homosexuels masculins,  Transgenres,  Création parlée,  Noirs américains,  Infections à VIH,  Médecine dans la littérature,  African American,  POETRY,  American,  General