More Than Organs

by Kay Ulanday Barrett

A love letter to Brown, Queer, and Trans futures, Kay Ulanday Barrett’s More Than Organs questions "whatever wholeness means” for bodies always in transit, for the safeties and dangers they silo. These poems remix people of color as earthbenders, replay “the choreography of loss” after the 2015 Pulse shooting, and till joy from the cosmic sweetness of a family’s culinary history.

Barrett works "to build / a shelter // of / everyone / [they] meet,” from aunties to the legendary Princess Urduja to their favorite air sign. More Than Organs tattoos grief across the knuckles of its left hand and love across the knuckles of its right, leaving the reader physically changed by the intensity of experience, longing, strength, desire, and the need, above all else, to survive.

Named by the American Library Association as a Barbara Gittings Stonewall Honor Book in Literature.

Genres: Poetry, Queer, LGBT, Disability, Nonfiction, Queer Lit, Transgender

96 pages, Paperback

First published March 12, 2020

About the author

Kay Ulanday Barrett is a poet, essayist, and cultural strategist. They are the 2022 winner of the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry by the Foundation of Contemporary Art. Barrett’s second poetry collection, More Than Organs received a 2021 Stonewall Book Honor Award by the American Library Association and is a 2021 Lambda Literary Finalist in Transgender poetryy. They have featured at The Lincoln Center, The U.N., Symphony Space, The Poetry Project, Princeton University, NYU, The Dodge Poetry Foundation, The Hemispheric Institute, Brooklyn Museum, and more. They’ve received fellowship invitations from MacDowell, Lambda Literary, Monson Arts, Drunken Boat, VONA, The Home School, VCCA, and Macondo. They are a 3x Pushcart Prize nominee and 2x Best of the Net nominee. Their contributions are found in The New York Times, The Advocate, F(r)iction, The Lily, Asian American Literary Review, Vogue, PBS News Hour, The Rumpus, NYLON, The Maine Review, Academy of American Poets, NYLON, WBAI Radio, NPR, and more. They have written two poetry books, When The Chant Comes (Topside Press, 2016) and More Than Organs (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020). They currently reside in Jersey City with their jowly dog.

Reviews

[Zeyn Joukhadar · Rating 5 out of 5]

"holy is just living living living or trying to."

Everything Kay Ulanday Barrett writes is brilliant, and this book is no different. These pages are a blazing, sacred shout, balm and broth to those of us who come to these lines trans, poc, queer, disabled, grieving or exhausted--and leave full, feeling seen.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just so, so wonderful. Full disclosure: Kay is a dear friend of mine, which is why I tried to read More Than Organs in one sitting. That was a mistake. Within a few poems, I was already in tears—the full chest-heaving kind—because Barrett renders language such that it could tear the sky down. They write about being Filipinx, non-binary, queer, and Brown. They write, too, about being disabled and living with chronic pain, and due to COVID-19, this collection feels especially timely. It is as heartbreaking as it is romantic, but it’s worth every line.

[Geleni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection is a snap shot of the resilience, genius, and tenderness of queer and trans people of color communities, as well as a heartful representation of the experience of moving through the world as a disabled person with all its navigation across changeable waters. Kay speaks from community as well as to it with a lush and righteous voice, never holding back grief or inside jokes, and always expanding the meaning of family that keeps us alive. Thank you for this testimony/portrait/loving *

[Steph Noell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A 2021 ALA Stonewall Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor Book.

[Jung · Rating 5 out of 5]

[5 stars] The newest poetry collection from Kay Ulanday Barrett is a funny, vulnerable, and nostalgic conversation on identity, migration, disability, family, and love. It is bold and queer, reminding its readers that we too are more than organs; we laugh, we grieve, we remember, we rage, we connect with ourselves and each other.

My favorite poems are Aunties love it when seafood is on sale, song for the kicked out & weary, pain an epistle, Earthbenders are Black and Brown Girls, People say that we’ve survived Reagan, What are alarm clocks when I got spasms?, How to make salabat, The Get Well Lexicon, Loving in the Apocalypse Years.

Recommended for those who love their poetry at the intersection of snark and tenderness, all the QTPOCs who have ever been the only one of us in the room, and anyone who has been or still is in mourning.

Goodreads Challenge: 23/72
Popsugar Reading Challenge: A book with a three-word title

[Jaaaaazzz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the kind of book you keep on your bedside or tucked into a backpack when traveling. These words need to be somewhere within reach. Kay's poems are touching, challenging, beautiful, and haunting. There's no better time to curl up with a book of poems that can make you cry, make you feel seen, make you swoon. More Than Organs is the kind of book I'll be returning to for a very long time.

[Madi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If what they say is true,
that bathrooms are where we are all most human,
then I am a dilapidated national geographic,
barely mammal, told to leave in the dirtiest of places."

[BookChampions · Rating 5 out of 5]

Barrett's book is a Stonewall Honor Book for exceptional achievement in works relating to the LGBTQ experience and is currently a Lambda Literary Award finalist for Transgender Poetry. The collection was published by the wonderful Sibling Rivalry Press (disturb/enrapture).

On the cover, a shadowy figure illuminates an enlarged heart in the dark of night--so fitting for this book because these poems are tender with wounds and bursting with love. There are love letters to deceased friends, cousins, elders, mentors. There are prayers and acts of recognition towards suffering strangers--children, folks in airports, a white professor, victims of hate crimes. So much love and vulnerability and tears. So much resilience in the face of ignorance and homophobia!

I could quote so many lines...the diction is so audacious and alive, and over the course of the book, the diction builds up and celebrates a Human Body that the world tries to say in different ways doesn't exist or deserve to exist: queer, brown, trans, disabled.

"I got too much queer in me to live their way tonight." [...] "People like us are used to lonely, are used to sobbing so hard / that homes are like unfathomable dreams. We search for / the rescue of safety in our own skin and reasons to just hold / someone's hand, to just find a job that doesn't / call us by the wrong name, to just find ourselves lost in music." [...] "Let your gaze be salve & sign of the cross / Let you be a words a stranger waits for. / Let love be a bunker you crawl into."

What a joy to read and reread. Seek this one out! No hesitation.

[River Snowdrop · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars, didn’t really vibe with the style of this

[Grace Walter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kay writes stunningly about disability, culture, and the trans experience. I won't get their words out of my head for a long time.

[Grace Quantock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This beautiful book is one I will hold onto & keep coming back to. It’s an expression, a benediction, a North Star, a mirror & a respite for LGBTIAQ+ folx & marginalised folx.
Lines from the poems nestle in my rib cage & murmur me into rest. The clarity & vivacity of the language articulated what is felt in so many lives & so infrequently verbalised.
It’s a gift to have been able to read it & I wish you that same gift too.

[Iz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful writing as always. I've followed Kay on social media for a while now and have attended their virtual readings often. I am constantly inspired by their words and poetry to create my own as well. (When the chant comes is easily one of my top 5 books of poetry I own). As a fellow queer pilipinx asian american, I greatly relate to so much of Kay's stories and poems; I feel like they are so necessary to be shared and heard so I am deeply grateful for their voice.

A few of my favorite poems/lines from More Than Organs:

- "What is it to come from an invisible place, when even your nation is unnamed and yet, funny story--you're still somehow able to breathe?" -- Notes from Brown People in Mackinaw City, MI.

- "...currently, there is only one show on air in 2018 that depicts two women of color who love each other on screen. what's a body when it has never witnessed love from their own?" -- actually, jenny schecter wasn't the worst...

- THE ENTIRE POEM Albany Park/Logan Square 1993-2000, Chicago IL. IS AMAZING

- Same with (Jungle Asian)

- "why does the sound of laughter have a bullet behind it?
why does a fist, just the circumference of the heart, now hold its hackles up?
how can this universe be a pillow and not a landmine?
what ways do I make my soul a swallowing and a shield?" --Loving in the Apocalypse Years
(also the stanza that came after this sent chills down my spine but I'm going to omit it because you just need to read it for yourself)

[Tere · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kay.... they've done it again. This book is resilient and witty, and honestly delightful. Kay weaves through the intersections of the marginalized person's experience, the differently-abled person's experience, and the LGBTQIA+ person's experience in a way that makes me feel seen and heard. The poems soothe, they sting, they hurt, and they love. As a black trans queer, this collection is the kind of collection that I wish had a house and a body and some time. If so, I would ask this collection to sit with me in a coffee shop so we can talk a little longer. It is that good.

[Czaerra Ucol · Rating 5 out of 5]

All these poems are balms of different types, for different kinds of soothing. Having lived between Chicago and New York City myself, many of the places in these poems were made tangible to me once more, especially through shared experiences as queer Filipinx people. Throughout this book, I was comforted in reading Kay’s vulnerability, ranging from great crescendos to reflections on quieter moments. These poems center community, as the dedication at the beginning speaks to. This book is like a friend that’s prepared for anything on your trip together, whether it’s a short public transit commute or a long, winding roadtrip. They always have something you need, whether you realize it or not.

[Eric Mueller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is more than just one thing that you hold in your hands and turn the pages of. A person is not just one thing, either. Instead of expressing that sentiment, Kay Ulanday Barret shows us just this through their vast volume of poetry. Through the lens of someone with a layered identity, the poet expresses their interactions with the world. Throughout the collection, there are moments to grieve, to cheer, to read aloud, to read standing up and pacing, to love, to shut up and listen, and the desire to connect to one's unseeable heritage, to connect to more.

"Rhythm Is a Dancer, Again," is one of my favorites, and it mourns the Pulse nightclub shooting in a way like I've never seen or heard:

We know the choreography of loss if there are no prayers possible
understand moments before there were claps praising the dip of a harmony,

then nothing. This isn't a shining beacon of a new reality
There is no epiphany. Lives have always been at stake dance floors
have always been altar, a song isn't ever just a song

"Loving In The Apocalypse," also strikes many chords, expressing the difficulty of staying afloat when they are too busy stocking up on canned goods.

You know a writer is ahead of their time when they can predict the future. Masks are a subtle motif in this, and reading this during a pandemic, I saw just how prophetic Ulunday Barrett was in their songs. The world might be doomed, but, if this book has anything to say about it, there is so much strength in queer people, especially queer people of color, and we won't be going down without greatness and a stellar fight.

[Sarah Glen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection, a refuge, a treasure, where "holy is just living living living or trying to."
More Kay Ulanday Barrett please.

Some faves:

— I cannot stop thinking about this line: "Treaties signed by taste buds"

"Have you ever tried to contain a wave
or date a water sign?

No matter what,
nothing nothing
can take away
its right to release."

"We know the choreography of loss. If there are no prayers possible,
understand moments before there were claps praising the dip of a harmony,

then nothing. This isn't a shining beacon of a new reality.
There is no epiphany. Lives have always been at stake, dance floors
have always been altar, a song isn't ever just a song."

"we want ransack. dislocated lamps, sprained countertops
on blister of our back and forth, we want to pound skin
into a luscious rhythm, the kind of sounds only
the psyche of summer can admit to."

"Over breakfast, I have this talk, I bite my toast, hope for
consistency, but gesture a crust she she shakes her head,
as I try to find something soft, something yolky, something
like pillow, something like velvet. I guess that's my issue,
I just want softness on my mouth."

"Let lonely make a lens so clear you become intergalactic.
Let residue be a blanket you shed every season.
Let your gaze be salve & sign of the cross.
Let you be words a stranger waits for.
Let love be a bunker you crawl into.
Let you guffaw, let you cackle.
Let you be last one left.
Let you be last one.
Let you be last.
Let you be.
Let you.
Let."

[E · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so, so glad that Barrett wrote another book! I read their first book a few years ago and loved it and was at a local bookstore when I recognized their name on the spine of the book and knew I had to read it right away! More than Organs did not disappoint!

I’m pretty sure I bookmarked every page of this book?! Really and truly, a fantastic read.

In the dedication of this book, they show gratitude for the idea of “making home.” Barrett’s words do exactly that—and more—for me, making me feel like home is in these poems. Such a beautiful collection.

[Gabe Dulecki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible read. I purchased this book after hearing Kay give a keynote address at a queer conference and being immediately hooked on the way they spoke their poems. It exceeded all my expectations. Highly recommend.

[Skye · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another read for university- one I couldn’t get into at first, but then felt like crying at in the end.

[Andrea Beatriz Arango]

This was my first (intentional 😅) read for the #TransRightsReadathon and I cannot recommend it enough. MORE THAN ORGANS is the best poetry book I've read since Emezi's Content Warning: Everything , and I'm glad I bought it so I could highlight my favorite parts.

Some lines I loved:

"Have you ever tried to contain a wave
or date a water sign?
No matter what,
nothing nothing
can take away
its right to release."

"This is what happens when you are away from your own people, even familiar turns fiction."

"I captured glow bugs / butts blinking / a collection of cosmos,
OHHHH, Hoy! What you doing?! You cannot keep creatures too long contained,
they'll lose their shine!!"

"I didn't get to - hold her hand as she died - I said I tried - just translates to - I couldn't make it - in time - I tell myself - ocean salt and tear salt - are one and the same - I press my eyes shut - cup ghost howl - cheeks splint wood worn - which is to say - learn to make myself a harbor"

One of the poems to their partner also did me in. I love when writers date other writers. We need more of that in romance books pls 🥵

I'm not running a fundraiser this week, since I'll be donating to an individual, but loads of bookstagrammers are, like my bestie @whenreadingattacks ! Plenty of places to donate if y'all want. But also, read trans year-round 😘

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of poems about identity, immigration, being Trans, hope, family, and survival.

from Origin Story for my chest or whatever it was: "a teacher reported a black eye / and a suspension. no culprits. just your body / a punishment / of itself, / a thing you / hardly even believed."

from consider the gender spectrum: "i am not a real man / this doesn't happen to / everybody's right to be real / doesn't mean a war to meet someone's / parents or to wear a shirt at the mall / because what is your love / but shame / worthy"

from In which your white doctor informs you that he worked on a Navy base in the Philippines: "feels like Baby is now first name for hundreds of women because that is what soldiers called women in my country, which means getting women ready for something / feels like wanting to fuck grown women with payment of an American candy bar / feels like war town misspelled into R&R"

[Vera Elwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, wow, wow. I loved this one so much that I often read the individual poems two or even three times before moving on. While I love poetry, I am not typically one for modern poetry in print. When it's clearly made for spoken word, it feels awkward on the page. This, however, was a perfect, beautiful middle-ground. I was thrilled to be holding the words in my hands but I also could hear the author speaking to me directly. While I realize the book was a collection of poetry, it felt like reading a novel in verse, in no small part due to the internal references and overall parallelism of the work. With each page, I got to know the author better and better. The poems often reference popular or well known music, which lends itself to the lyrical verses. Each verse reveals new details of the Ulanday Barrett's life and identities as Brown, Queer, Trans, and Disabled, revealing answers to questions asked whole poems or even chapters ago. I will be reading this one again.

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll be honest, I'm not much of a poetry person. I mostly prefer to read stories with broad narratives and lots of fun world-building. But since this is one of the books for the main book club I'm in at the moment, I picked it up early to read.

And I really connected with a good portion of the poems, which usually doesn't happen when I read poetry. Because of that, this is probably the most relatable poetry I've read. And I'm excited to hear my book club's thoughts on it in a couple of weeks.

[Casper Falls · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second half totally transported me! Especially the ones exploring generational trauma and family connections, though some of the chronic illness ones hit close to home. Their style stands out from other poetry I've read lately. They masterfully play with language, formatting, and overall style. Some of that left me a bit emotionally disconnected in the first half, but that's a personal preference. Glad to have stumbled over them and totally worth the praise.

[franki · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really don't like reading poetry for a plethora of reasons, but i read this for a class and like. wow. i cried several times reading this for several different reasons.

my fav poems from this collection include: people say we've survived reagan, rhythm is a dancer again, you + me = anomoly, and when your aunty is lost she tries to find you.

[Tutankhamun18 · Rating 3 out of 5]

//3.5stars//

My favourites:

• On departure & how to say goodbye to your chest
• consider the gender spectrum
•People say that we’ve survived Reagan
• While looking at a photo albums
• I just want dimsum undisturbed by wypipo
• The Get Well Lexicon
• Why I don’t go to bars with white poets anymore

Some of these didnt really work for me, but those that did were fantastic!

[KYE Intimates]

A love letter to Brown, Queer, and Trans futures, Kay Ulanday Barrett's More Than Organs questions 'whatever wholeness means' for bodies always in transit, for the safeties and dangers they silo.

Shared by Maya Moore (model & disability advocate) for 'Table Talk', KYE Intimates.

[Ross Williamson · Rating 4 out of 5]

091020: quarantine buddy read #21 with Keagan! rtc, possibly

[James Huynh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some really sharp poetry in here. I really enjoyed the voice of the poems and how personal each of them felt.

[Serena · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection of poems that were incredibly thought-provoking. Each poem had so much feeling in it - it was hard not to empathize with it in some way.