Description: "The third book in a trilogy revising the confessional, mahogany uses the music of Diana Ross as an emotive/sonic echo into which the poet sings the realities of being a grown, Black woman, losing everyone you ever loved, and still surviving, finding your calling and learning to love your beautiful, broken self"--
Review Quotes:
"mahogany, the third book in erica lewis's trilogy, grapples frankly with essential questions of survival, loss, and (self-)love, seen through the scrim of Diana Ross's music (to which the title nods)."--Sylee Gore, Harriot Books, Poetry Foundation
"As she cared for her dying mother, lewis revisited the music of Diana Ross, which had illuminated their family life together: 'maybe i'm not here/ to be a superstar, ' this poetic caregiver comes to realize, 'but for some/ soft nameless joy/ am resurrected.' Her book is a songbook of loss and transcendence: 'Mahogany showed me how absolutely beautiful we were and could be, ' lewis writes of the 1975 film starring Ross. The same could be said about this exuberant and elegiac collection."--Srikanth Reddy, Washington Post