Mounted: On Horses, Blackness, and Liberation

by Bitter Kalli

Joining the growing Black creative movement currently refashioning horses and cowboy imagery, a thoughtful, probing exploration of the shared history of Blackness and horses which reveals what its image can teach us about nationhood, race, and culture.

Drawing on their personal history as a former urban equestrian, Black queer person, and child of Jamaican and Filipino immigrants, essayist and art critic Bitter Kalli contends the horse should be regarded as a critical source of power and identity in Black life.

In a series of astute essays, Kalli explores the work of Black artists and influencers from Beyoncé to filmmakers Tiona Nekkia-McClodden and Jeymes Samuel and explores their own life-long relationship to equines. Alternatively playful and critical, meditative and biting, these essays navigate time and place—from the shadows of racetracks where jockey culture and the ubiquity of “equestrian chic” was born, to the reclamation—or, in Lil Nas X’s word, yeehawification—of the image of the cowboy, to the fraught connections of equestrian sport to slavery, US militarization, and European colonial domination. At heart, Kalli probes a central What does it mean for Black people to ride and tend horses in the context of a culture that has also used horses against them?

Throughout these essays, Kalli reflects on the experience of being the only Black member of the equestrian team at Columbia University, and how the aesthetics, ethos, and practice of horse stewardship contributed to their understanding of gender, sexuality, and radical community building. Mounted moves beyond the reductive stereotypes that dominate our perceptions of “horse people”—the swaggering masculinity, snooty elitism, and assumed whiteness—to reveal how Black people relate to the image and physical presence of the horse in nature and culture, considering violence, sexualization, power, migration, and more through its image.

Genres: Nonfiction, Audiobook, Essays, Animals, Politics, Race

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 19, 2025

Reviews

[Relena_reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this collection is like reading early Baldwin or hooks. Kalli is going to be an intellectual mind to be reckoned with over the next several decades. This preview of their thoughtful mind is already quite good, but also limited by their life experience up to this point.

The framework that Kalli builds in this text for viewing the relationship of Blackness and horse culture is provocative and allows multiple angles of analysis. I look forward to seeing what else they'll be investigating in the future.

There are some odd stumbles in pronunciation in the text that hopefully get cleared up prior to release.

Audio ARC provided by NetGalley.

[Beau Manglass · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

I am reviewing an ARC I received via NetGalley. (It's been a little bit since I finished this one but I still have to send ARC feedback and the longer I wait the less I will remember to comment on!)

This book really makes me want Goodreads to have half stars, as it wasn't quite a 3 for me but giving it a 2 feels too low. In Mounted: On Horses, Blackness, and Liberation, Bitter Kalli presents a (very) broad series of essays which each touch upon the social and cultural significance of horses within black spaces, particularly within art and media.

Some of these essays I really appreciated and got a lot out of-- Kalli's reflections on being one of the of the only people of color (and the only Black person) on Columbia's equestrian team, their commentary on "Pony Books" (a.k.a. horse literature aimed at girls), and essay on the The Saddle Club TV series still stand out to me. I did wish there was much more discussion of their experiences riding at Columbia throughout the work; that was a very interesting element of the book and may have made nice thru-line. I was left wanting to know more about what that was like.

As the book goes on the essays feel a little less impactful, and overall, I did get a vibe of "I am putting absolutely everything I have created that touches upon this subject matter into this book;" some of the pieces felt like less-developed reflections rather than deep analysis. But overall, Kalli succeeds in their aim at using this work to carve out more intellectual space for discussions of Blackness and horse culture, which are sorely needed in a hugely white-dominated space.

[Yvette Sapp · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received an advanced reader's copy of this book via Net Galley. I thought the essays written by Kalli were very interesting. The ones I found most interesting included "Working Animals". and the tie in of enslaved persons value often being paired with the value and or mistreatment of horses. "Dancehall Rodeo", which reflected on the history of dancehall music and Jamaican entertainers incorporating the imagery of American cowboy films, including music artists who used names that gave a nod to American cowboy film history or using names of America actors who appeared in those films. The "Equestrian Chic" essay gave details about the connection of 1980s advertisements for the brand Polo Ralph Lauren with aspirations of what was then seen as success in the economic sense, including groups of young New Yorkers who would sell and or acquire clothing through shoplifting clothes and other items from the Polo Ralph Lauren brand. Kalli brings the history full circle by describing how those events made the brand popular and in later years, more accessible to the next generation of young people, Other essays were a bit uneven, including "Horse of the Divine". I wish Kalli had gone into more depth about her experiences on her college equestrian team.

[Julia K · Rating 3 out of 5]

was never enough of a horse girl to properly appreciate this, but it was good. loved the parts about art & music, especially the section about dandyism in fashion & music and the sections that included photo-references of artwork in analysis. I wish there was a whole lot more of that stuff and slightly less memoiry bits, though I definitely valued the author’s perspective & authority that she established on the subject. overall, the book was a touch disparate, fleeting from one idea to the next, though the references were great and spanned from forgotten histories to popular rap artists today and everything in between. I appreciated a lot of the quotes and references and I added a number of movies to my watch list/books to my tbr/music to my Spotify, but ultimately I wish this book was more focused on its thesis. I’d definitely read more nonfiction from this author.

[Briann · Rating 3 out of 5]

The introduction immediately drew me in with its talk of exploring Blackness and horses, and I was eager to see the author’s perspective and research. However, much of the book felt somewhat incomplete, as the author often presented brief overviews. Deeper analysis was possible, and I wish the author had delved deeper. Overall, however, Mounted offered a thought-provoking exploration and analysis that gave me plenty to consider.

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love books that give me a different perspective on something I thought I already knew about. This collection of essays builds on history, pop culture, philosophy, and identity politics in a new and unique way. I especially loved the chapters "Pony Books" and "when no softness came", though all of them intrigued me in various ways, revealing pieces of the author's own story alongside their discovery and wrestling with these topics.