Magical Negro

by Morgan Parker

Magical Negro is an archive of Black everydayness, a catalog of contemporary folk heroes, an ethnography of ancestral grief, and an inventory of figureheads, idioms, and customs. These American poems are both elegy and jive, joke and declaration, songs of congregation and self-conception. They connect themes of loneliness, displacement, grief, ancestral trauma, and objectification, while exploring and troubling tropes and stereotypes of Black Americans. Focused primarily on depictions of Black womanhood alongside personal narratives, the collection tackles interior and exterior politics—of both the body and society, of both the individual and the collective experience. In Magical Negro, Parker creates a space of witness, of airing grievances, of pointing out patterns. In these poems are living documents, pleas, latent traumas, inside jokes, and unspoken anxieties situated as firmly in the past as in the present—timeless Black melancholies and triumphs.

Genres: Poetry, Race, Feminism, Nonfiction, African American, Womens, Social Justice

112 pages, Paperback

First published February 5, 2019

About the author

Morgan Parker is the author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, a Goodreads Choice Award semi-finalist, and Other People's Comfort Keeps Me Up at Night, selected by Eileen Myles for the 2013 Gatewood Prize. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Paris Review, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, Best American Poetry 2016, The New York Times, and The Nation. She is the recipient of a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a 2016 Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. She is a Sagittarius.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't really know how to talk about poetry. I know what I like and I know what I don't like. These poems are amazing. Strange. Clever. Playful. Powerful. Intricately crafted. Parker takes on the contemporary black condition, interracial dating, history, the gap in Angela Davis's teeth. She has a nuanced understanding of popular culture and how blackness contributes to what we consume. A lot to admire here. Great book.

[Tim Null · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not hip enough for Morgan Parker's poems, yet I still recommend them to all the folks who are hip enough. Personally, I am either too old or not old enough.

********************

MAGICAL NEGRO poems by MORGAN PARKER

[an excerpt from a morgan parker poem]
Why Jive Birds Sing
the thing--
is not yet dead.

[Adam Dalva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Terrific book - lives up to the high standards of Parker's earlier poetry collections, while branching out in new, incisive directions.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

"No one can serve two masters like we can, be future and what they threatened to forget."

My first time reading Morgan Parker's work was when I received an ARC for The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic. To say that I LOVED this anthology would be an understatement. See review here: Black Girl Magic So when I came across this title on NetGalley I was super excited.

Magical Negro is radical, elegiac, witty and intimate. Using cultural and historical references, Morgan Parker unabashedly confronts the traumas of our past and our present. Her prose speaks to both the collective experience and to crimes committed against oneself. Magical Negro has transformative power, one that you can return to time and again and be moved.

As with any anthology there were some poems I liked better then others.
My favorites were:
Nancy Meyers and My Dream of Whiteness
Magical Negro #84: The Black Body
A Brief History of the Present
What I Am
after Terrance Hayes
If you are over staying woke
We Are the House That Holds the Table at Which Yes We Will Happily Take a Goddamn Seat
after Solange
Magical Negro #80: Brooklyn

I am looking forward to Morgan Parker's upcoming YA novel Who Put This Song On? that is due out later this year.

Special thanks to NetGalley, Tin House books and Morgan Parker for advanced access to this book.

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read these poems twice, before and after a historical novel about racism in Oregon, and it strikes a chord with me that this collection is published by Tin House. One of the poems even talks about how it's too late for her to try to live in Portland or Brooklyn (the two homes of her publishing house.) And so the poetry settles into the reality of our existence, and the need to confront discomfort if we are really going to talk about race.

Since I had a review copy I can't quote any poems directly, but I want to, so much. Morgan Parker is in conversation with many of these topics, with current events, with other poets and poems, with the white gaze, the male gaze. Several poems are titled Magical Negro #x and imagine the perspective of several key figures in history; some are broader like the one about "the black body" (it repeats "the body is a person" to great effect.)

I can't decide which collection I like more - this, which seems more of a direct response to recent events, or There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, which gave me my first introduction to the strength and unpandering resistance of her words.

Favorites from this collection:

Everything Will Be Taken Away
"...You are a woman now
but you have always had skin...."

Whites Only

Magical Negro #84: The Black Body

Ode to Fried Chicken's Guest Appearance on Scandal

If you are over staying woke (and here in audio)

I Told My Therapist I Tried to Meditate and She Laughed

We Are the House That Holds the Table at Which Yes We Will Happily Take a Goddamn Seat
"...The difference between worth
and worthless without them

is science: how it feels to not be
able to see a person, and the number

of instances when we believed
we should die. ..."

Magical Negro #80: Brooklyn
"...Lead us not into white neighborhoods.
Deliver us from microaggressions...."

[Bobbieshiann · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

12 lines into the first poem and tears filled my eyes ready to escape and poor down my face. I read myself. I read my life. This is a reflection of me. Of my people. I cry because sometimes the hurt can sit in your stomach for so long until you release it.

“and repetition is a literary device, and paranoia is a weakness of the oppressed: we cannot be mentally sound”.

Morgan Parker points out all that is Black. She brings forth the stereotypes that has shaped an image of us that may not be repaired. But does that matter? She shares experiences with White men but also shares the judgment. The inner judgment one gives to their self as they date outside their race. She brings forth the beauty/what we go through to be beautiful (hot comb), hurt, history, and truth of Black people. The way she speaks of the Black womanhood blew my mind. It was raining truth!

I will be honest, I reread so many parts to fully grasp what she is saying. To fully grasp my feelings. Yes, it is short but it is not a quick read. It is something to sit and reflect on and the mixed feelings and connections are okay.

[K · Rating 5 out of 5]

Magical Negro feels like...when I text my Black queer friend(s) that I feel alone and want to die, and she hears my pain. Then we talk about the new hair products we’re using and the white girl at work who pissed us off the other day.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I became fully absorbed in the living windows that Morgan Parker paints with her lyrical words each time I opened this book and began reading. Her gift of poetry is extraordinary and I read spellbound.

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, just wow, what a way to start 2019. This collection is a must read for everyone. Especially white people, more importantly white men.

[jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poetry in this book is stunning. It's lyrical but also punchy and also so very cutting. If you are white, like me, you need to read this. You need to know all the ways in which Black folks are dehumanized. You need to learn how nano-atomic it is. How string-molecular. How, not daily, but minuteLY. You need to know that every time you say "all of us" you are cutting out millions. You need to learn a new way of thinking. You need to turn yourself around. This will help. I promise it will help. But you have to put yourself through it. Do it now.

[David J · Rating 4 out of 5]

With Magical Negro, Morgan Parker builds and improves upon her previous poetry collection, 2017’s There are More Beautiful Things than Beyoncé, and I am so here for it. Magical Negro details what it means to be black, what it means to be a black American, and what it means to be a black American woman in such a gut-wrenching and informative way that you can’t help but pay attention and soak in the frustration and rage and pain and pride and love and sorrow of it all. Parker mixes American past with her own personal narrative to necessarily offer a critique on America’s current sociopolitical sphere. Her comments on literature and media in the use of a “magical negro” to push forward the plot of the other (white) characters continues the needed discussions in the realm of art too. These poems are electric and nuanced and important and this collection deserves its attention and praise. Please go read this. I doubt you’ll regret it.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morgan Parker makes miracles happen with words. Her first book, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé was so fabulous I had to read this as soon as I found out about it. She writes piercingly of race. Vivid images are counterpointed with street vernacular or more ordinary speech but the combination is thrilling and often disturbing. Her poems are both a celebration of African-Americans and an indictment of white America.

[johnny ♡ · Rating 5 out of 5]

phenomenal. a must read!

[Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magical Negro by Morgan Parker — 3.75 ★

Magical Negro is a collection of poetry that catalogs Black "everydayness" while focusing primarily on Black womanhood through Parker's personal narrative.

Parker accomplishes this by first looking OUT: at community grief, modern/folk heroes, and the history of Black Americans; while also looking IN: at her own experiences of objectification, trauma, and anxiety.

I imagine her poems feel like a sort of life-raft to women, especially Black women, a caressing hand on the back which says, "I hear your pain, it's real."
—

I was surprised by how much her poetry felt like a history lesson. I was constantly learning. What I enjoyed most is the way she addresses pop culture and how the Black experience has informed the larger community in often unrecognized, or rather, unacknowleged ways (this was paradigm shifting for me).

I won't lie, I had my own learning curve with this one — so I took my time with it consistently putting it down to google references to musicians or actresses who I didn't recognize (also I'm quite crap with names for famous people).

Roxanne Gay notes this collection to be: "Strange. Clever. Playful. Powerful." and as a whole I couldn't agree more.

Spot on Shelf? Yes... I feel like there was still so much here that at the time flew over my head because there wasn't exactly the space in this format to elaborate. In other words, at times the poetry felt more like essays, and I ended up craving more details, explanations, just to help me along... But in retrospect, I also don't think Parker is concerned with my learning-curve, and why should she be? Her poetry is a combination of humor, assertions, bold declarations that provide that gut-punch which for me felt like: being on the outside, being unsure, being uncomfortable, and a bit out of my depth. And honestly, perhaps that's the point. Not catering to me, but making me ask questions and realize there is so much I don't know.
—

Thank you so much for sending me this collection Tin House

[Jimmy · Rating 4 out of 5]

She has a way of blending pop culture with the poignant with the abstract with the just-right-little-detail with a lot of attitude. Sometimes I understand her, other times I don't but don't care because it feels right. Some of her poems are more like essays and I wish those were longer and more essay-like, because sometimes I need a little more to get her essay-points than her poetry-points.

Nancy Meyers and My Dream of Whiteness

I can’t be sorry
enough. I have learned
everything is urgent.
Road closings, animal lungs.
I am working hard to be
as many people as possible
before I can’t.
I know my long, dark movie
is fistfuls
of gravel in a brown bottle.
My storyboards fill me
with calculated sorrow.
A full plate and burnt sage.
Dollar signs, breaking news.
I work two and three jobs.
I am honorable and brave.
The ensemble cast
whittles down.
Maybe I am a slave.
I make ends meet.
I don’t get kissed.
Behold my wide smile.
Octavia Spencer cooks in a small
apartment. She serves joyfully
and doesn’t eat. She wipes her palm
on her apron, forehead.
Angela Bassett is sick and tired
of being. Denzel Washington
reminds us how often
we are afraid. We get arrested.
Someone narrates.
What you look like
is sheer fabrics and ivory shells.
Alec Baldwin is smoking a joint
in the bathroom of a CEO’s
birthday party. Steve Martin
tastes the goat cheese
and considers nothing.
You never get arrested.
There is no question
that god waits at the end
of your staircase curling
softly like wood-finished ribbon.
Anne Hathaway hires a decorator.
Diane Keaton makes midnight
pancakes, tops them with
lavender ice cream.
What is beautiful
does not need to be
called beautiful.
No one talks about money.
In our house, the sky
is upside down.
None of us find unlikely love.
I do not revel in my luxury.
I would rather serve than eat.
If it seems like I desire you,
you’re right. I want my whole
mouth around your safety.
I want to be buried
side by side.

These are my favorite poems from this collection

I Feel Most Colored When I Am Thrown Against a Sharp White Background
Magical Negro #217: Diana Ross Finishing a Rib in Alabama, 1990s
Nancy Meyers and My Dream of Whiteness
Whites Only
Magical Negro #607: Gladys Knight on the 200th Episode of The Jeffersons
When a Man I Love Jerks Off in My Bed next to Me and Falls Asleep
Magical Negro #1: Jesus Christ
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
We Are the House That Holds the Table at Which Yes We Will Happily Take a Goddamn Seat
Magical Negro #80: Brooklyn
The Black Saint & the Sinner Lady & the Dead & the Truth
IT WAS SUMMER NOW AND THE COLORED PEOPLE CAME OUT INTO THE SUNSHINE

[Leah Rachel von Essen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Morgan Parker's newest poetry collection, MAGICAL NEGRO, is an incredible catalog of everyday despair, hope, fear in Black life, in Black womanhood. The book is divided between three parts: "Let Us Now Praise Famous Magical Negroes," "Field Negro Field Notes," and "Popular Negro Punchlines." Parker evokes the voices of figureheads and folk heroes; Parker calls back to the deepest, oldest grief and black traumas while talking about her sexuality, her fear, her hurt today in its vivid pop culture and color.
.
Titles of poems include “Who Were Frederick Douglass’s Cousins, and Other Quotidian Black History Facts That I Wish I Learned in School,” “I TOLD MY THERAPIST I TRIED TO MEDITATE AND SHE LAUGHED,” “My Sister Says White Supremacy Is Turning Her Crazy,” and “We Are the House That Holds the Table at Which Yes We Will Happily Take a Goddamn Seat.” Her poems are about power, personal, intimate, public, institutional. She writes about every white boy she's ever dated in "Matt." In the poems "The History of Black People" and "The History of the Present," Parker brutally but simply tells stories of hope, despair, of the need to just survive ("I worry sometimes I will only be allowed a death story."), and "Now More Than Ever" tears into white guilt with her repeating "and ever and ever"s. My two favorite poems were "Let's Get Some Better Angels at This Party," a poem about seeing angels everywhere ("There is one who looks like your brother."), and "Two White Girls in the African Braid Shop on Marcy and Fulton," a poem full of questions, wondering, the invisible shaking of heads.
.
It's a superb, quick collection that once again shows Parker's incredible talent. MAGICAL NEGRO is out February 5.

[BookChampions · Rating 3 out of 5]

This ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Parker's previous collection has been on my radar for a long time, and has evaded my grasp on a few occasions. When the opportunity to review this new collection appeared (thank you, NetGalley!), I jumped on it. While there are some strong poems here and there in the book's center section, on the whole I never did catch the wave or rhythm of this book.

While there are some moments that pack a punch, I wanted to love this from beginning to end. Just glance at the table of contents and you'll see Parker's way with titles. Utterly brilliant ones: "If you are over staying woke" and "We Are the House That Holds the Table at Which Yes We Will Happily Take a Goddamn Seat" and "My Sister Says White Supremacy Is Turning Her Crazy." And how can you resist of title of her debut collection, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé ? You can't.

But for all the shots of fire and defiance throughout this book (and there is plenty to provoke and celebrate), too often I was left a little cold once I made it to the end of a poem.

My favourite poems were probably "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" and "Who Were Frederick Douglass's Cousins, and Other Quotidian Black History Facts That I Wish I Learned in School." "Matt" is also a stand-out. I guess I preferred, in this book at least, the more narrative poems to the abstract ones.

Parker is definitely a talent, and these images are going to sing to readers. I just wish I was one of them. I would not be against reading more of her work.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Parker's lyrics hopscotch amidst the personal and the political, the popular and the literary. Desire and individuality erupt through broader cultural and contextual concerns. She seems equally comfortable amidst a profusion of forms while playing off racial tropes to great advantage.
-----------------------------------------------------
One of my favorites from this collection:

"Magical Negro #80: Brooklyn"

Here is the bright, young food co-op.

Here is the steeple. Here are the royals

not yet dead. Here are the Niggas With

Amethyst crystals. Shea butter

halos orbit half-shaved heads bowed

for vindication. Our mother patchouli

who art in the apothecary on Flatbush

hallowed be your Dutch wax dress.

Give us this day we light soy candles

for dead brothers. Give us this day we soak

our supremacy wounds.

Give us this day.

Give us fresh juice green

as avocados, and strength

to dismantle Fox news. We are marching

even in our sleep. We are reading

DuBois, getting high off the salt eaters.

Thy kingdom come to yoga. Thy will

be a black feminist Tumblr. Thy will is not

our struggle. Forgive us. We have gathered

to learn to pronounce freedom.

Procession body roll, communion oysters

with prosecco. Roses for our waist beads.

We have moved away from suburbia.

Now we live on Saturn.

We don’t pray anymore

the way our parents taught us.

Instead we stack our arms

with wood and music

hatches from our tongue rings.

Hymns for the dead, hookahs for

the almost-dead. Praise our half-lives.

Our bodies break but we still sage them.

We wrote the good book: instructions

for building new worlds.

Lead us not into white neighborhoods.

Deliver us from microaggressions.

Blessed are we who mourn, we who

are a blood built on a hill of embers.

We no mail-order hipster black wife.

We just trying to text our moms.

We are what we eat, leafy and anointed.

We are who we serve: banquets and bouquets

forever, foreverever, foreverever.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, I was so excited to pick up Parker’s new collection. Magical Negro is different. I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I enjoyed her previous collection, but it’s also different in a good way.

I don’t want to turn this review into a comparison/contrast kind of deal— But I want to say that the way Parker went about Magical Negro is wittier and careful to consider the past and present to talk about Black culture and trauma. There are careful, specific details that were so physical in nature. Parker still focuses on Black women and their bodies, albeit in a different manner that I wouldn’t say is “less poetic,” but there’s a bite to her words; a demand for society to acknowledge their presence. I think of “Magical Negro #84: The Black Body” in particular, where she writes “The body is a person.” five times. If not that, many of her poems are physically intimate.

Parker is always a delight to read, so you won’t be disappointed either way. There are quite a few poems well worth thinking about.

[Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't know if this is true or not, but in general, when students recommend books to me, I don't like them.

But this was recommended by a student, and I thought it was wonderful.

I have neither the emotional capital, emotional capacity, or the energy (it's been a long school year, let alone evening) to write this book the review it deserves.

So I'll settle with some lines that stuck out to me:

From, "And Cold Sunset,"

"Nothing helps me not think about universes."

From, "The History of Black People, Part 5"

"...Do you sometimes dream
of a handful of Skittles sprawling on February lawn?"

From, "Who Were Frederick Douglass's Cousins,
and Other Quotidian Black History Facts
That I Wish I Learned in School"

"I have a body. It sits in a desk.
Every day is bitten with new guilt.
My teacher can see right
through me, all the way
to Black History Month."


From, "A Brief History of the Present"

"...Which is greater: the amount of minutes
it takes for requested backup to arrive at the scene of
a twelve-year-old in a park playing with toys, or the
varieties of insects that might make contact with a person
laid in a street over the course of four hours on a summer
evening in St. Louis?"

It is interesting that the first poem in section 3, "Popular Negro Punchlines" is, "Great America."

Morgan Parker is kind with cuts.

She cuts. (you) She has cuts.

She's angry. She's kind.

She's leading a horse to water, and asking it to wake up.

Morgan Parker is the dozen analogies I've written and erased. Most of them would make us both look bad.

I appreciated this collection.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

repetition is a literary device,
and paranoia is a weakness of the oppressed: we cannot be mentally sound.

My reaction to this magnificent collection can be found at the point where my self-conscience meets self-awareness, the result is silent appreciation.

[Greg Bem · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic collection from cover to cover. Prominently explores issues and realities of Blackness historic and contemporary. Worth reading again and again and again and again.

[ocelia]

finally starting to feel like i have read enough poetry to be able to declare favorite poets in good faith and morgan parker is one of em

[jada alexis · Rating 5 out of 5]

ahhh!! i can't remember if i started this on sunday or monday. either way go read this!!!! been a while since i read something this refreshing

[Cátia Vieira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Why should you read this book?
I always keep a poetry book around and read a few poems each day. I finished Magical Negro by Morgan Parker this week and I have to say that I am amazed by Parker’s writing!

Magical Negro is a such a short poetry collection but it packs a punch. The poems revolve around black heritage and what it means to be black in our world.

Parker is such a resourceful, powerful and extraordinary poet. Her writing is touching and clever and I was amazed by the way she’s able to convey her message: the feelings of displacement and all the trauma, grief and objectification black people feel. I remember reading certain poems and feeling unable to proceed. I would linger. I would take my time. I would reread those verses and indulge myself in her words, in the way she weaves her poems. They are so skillfully and beautifully written.

I’d like to thank Tin House Books for sending a review copy.

For more reviews, follow me on instagram: @booksturnyouon

[Emily]

RTC

[Anthony Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

morgan parker is my jam!!! "It Was Summer Now and the Colored People Came Out Into the Sunshine" wrecked me bad!!

[Jenny]

Morgan Parker's poetry is fire, and not just in the colloquial sense. These poems burn and destroy and lighten the dark. Painful, harsh, and cleansing. The last section was my favorite.

[Megan O'Hara · Rating 4 out of 5]

someone teach me how to read poetry bc this is good.

[disco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The History of Black People

1.

The saddest triptych
is our blood, trouble
passed down. A root out
on our wet stiff suits.
Everyone walks behind us.
I would rather dance
hoodwinked with the devil
than be alone. I pick
bad juju over yellow
meadow and your moon.
Florida, Kentucky hemlocks
grow in sepia glint. Red clay
everywhere. This isn’t a dream—
in the beginning, red clay.