Nursery Rhymes in Black: Poems

Description: Nursery Rhymes in Black is a poetic recollection of race, roots, culture, and identity. Paying homage to the memory and work of elders and ancestors, Latorial Faison remembers her own matriarch, mother, grandmother--the rich memories of having grown up in rural, historic Southampton County, Virginia.

Review Quotes: "Latorial Faison embodies the creed, 'She who gives love / Must learn to organize pain, ' for her embrace of the joyful and often sorrowful experiences of Black life is accomplished with such cultural precision and old-fashioned wisdom. She demands from us a listen."
--Dr. Joanne Veal Gabbin, founder of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and executive director of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective

"These heart-stopping poems transport us through the life-journey of a Southern mother, an orphan who became a widely respected elder. Faison, her mournful daughter, uses deep grieving as the vehicle to move this body of poems. This is a mother who, in spite of strict segregation, was a valiant, seemingly invincible parent, even facing down terminal cancer. In the midst of putting her mother on a pedestal, though, the poet shows the fault-lines of common mortals. The daughter/poet celebrates the mother/near-to-an-angel in glorious phraseology. 'Black & woman / you always rose again . . . a whole cloud of witnesses weeping.' But Mama was also a practical goddess who kept up insurance policies on everybody in the household, what the poet ironically calls 'a way to go fund ourselves.' These poems explain the Black Holy Ghost, the 'white Jesus / Hanging high' on frames in Black living rooms, the lynching tree, post-Jim Crow, Southampton County, VA, and slow integration. But the poems about Mama ground the collection and elevate it simultaneously."
--Judy Juanita, author of Virgin Soul and The Black Experience in Four Genres

"Creatively constructing the intricacies of memory and familial advice associated with small-town Virginia, Latorial Faison probes African American and family history, parent/child relationships, work, sexuality, racial interactions, racism, and death/loss/grief. With strong feminine influences that shaped her life, Faison celebrates that strength, its basis in a sometimes-problematic religion, and its transcendence of that origin. Mother and grandmother figures are always near, and their loss, as in 'How to Bury Your Mama, ' may shake the foundations for a moment, but the tradition from which they come thrives. Nursery Rhymes in Black captures a time and a place that are no less powerful because they are more memory than just down the street. Faison invites readers to see that world, that light, those lives, that history through the eyes of a faithfully attentive observer and analyst."
--Trudier Harris, author of Summer Snow: Reflections from a Black Daughter of the South and Bigger: A Literary Life

"A masterful love letter to her mother, with each verse serving as both tribute and deep reflection. The beautiful opening poem, 'Mama as a Negro Spiritual, ' locates, orients us, and sets the tone for the entire collection. The poet observes her mother's ability to transform pain into love and the effort it requires. Her mother is revealed as Ms. Shirley, the lunch lady; the bus driver; Sammy's wife; and a boundless giver of self. The poet is boundless too and grapples with the realities of Virginia, particularly Southampton County. While acknowledging that past injustices cannot be undone, Faison confronts them head on. Nursery Rhymes in Blackstands as a testament to the power of bearing witness--to both people and place--as a means of claiming individual and generational space. It's an act of speaking out during hardship and grief, a full-throated Hallelujah Anyhow!"
--Glenis Redmond, author of The Listening Skin and The Song of Everything

"Latorial Faison's debut is above all a med