Like Kansas

Abstract

Like Kansas is a collection on confessional and performance poems. The poems consider the historical perceptions of black womanhood and the black female body. I discuss that history in connection with my current experiences, particularly the racial and sexual microagressions that I confront in my daily life. In the collection, details of my personal life merge with and juxtapose against those of other black women’s lives, including my mother's to create an oppositional narrative that explores the complexities of black womanhood and resistance. That is to say my confrontations with issues concerning race, sex, and class are encoded in discussions of anger, the erotic, and the personal. Framing this as an example of oppositional poetics, my intention is to offer a pathway within feminist literature and scholarship that builds upon and extends the quest for identity, survival, and autonomy.