gossypiin

by Ra Malika Imhotep

gossypiin is a Black feminist hypertext that registers the feeling of an experience of the world in which the self is an unstable plurality continuously unmade. It is a story marked into the flesh of the poet, transferred onto the page through a process of distillation. It is an enactment of Black feminist poetic utterance that tends to the inside parts. This harvest of poems is inspired by the plant medicine latent in Gossypium Herbaceum, or Cotton Root Bark, which was used by enslaved Black women to induce labor, cure reproductive ailments, and end unwanted pregnancies. Through an arrangement of stories and memories experienced, read, heard, reimagined, and remixed, the poet reckons with a peculiar yet commonplace inheritance of violation and survival. gossypiin performs an interruption of the narrative silence around sexual harm and the mark it makes on Black femme subjectivity.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism

120 pages, Paperback

First published April 12, 2022

Reviews

[Sadie Hartmann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Stories Come and Stories Go
Listen to the Words and Help Them Grow
It Matters Not if the Stories are True
Only What
They Mean to You
'Cause Stories Come and Stories Go
Away We Go!"
..
"gossypiin is a prayer for Black trans, queer, sick, disabled, Southern, and giri-born' kin everywhere."
—Alan Pelaez-Lopez
..
When I read a collection of poems, I still feel like I'm reading this intimate, private thing and I'm not supposed to be prying. This felt like that-first because that's just how poetry feels (on the outside looking in) and second, because I'm white. But I could NOT look away from this. It is so interesting with such a strong sense of voice. My favorite is:
"One of Four Women Walking Down Peachtree
Street Licking Herself"
It just made me smile. The poem is so provocative.
.
"and Southern as I am
I like my peaches unripe like when the flesh resist my teeth a lil bit
or at least that's what I thought I liked, till one day I bit hard and felt the sweet of it slip through my fingers right down my arm"
.
The "Gratitude" section at the end made me so emotional. And I'm thankful I buddy-read “Spunk” by Zora Neale Hurston with a bookstagram buddy last year because I got a lot of the references and quotes and nods to her legacy

[Apollo Y · Rating 5 out of 5]

“all that is black and whole at the bottom of the sea where we make our residence time and time again. please don’t call it a grave, say resting place. don’t lip death just open mouth to exhale ‘transition’

let me be still, and taste a peace kept from our kind.”

[Loren Cahill · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got a running list of folks with PhDs who I wanna one day collaborate with and Ra Malika Imhotep is at the top of the list. I’m so inspired by her cultural work, archival work and now by her poetry. A really raw anthology that I enjoyed. This one is for the poetry fans!

[Lisa S · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.75