black god mother this body by Raina J. León
“With black god mother this body, Raina León offers us poetics that feel like collective memoir, for all of us in the lineage of "people murdered slow." The slivers and snippets of memory and confession range a lifetime of being daughter and granddaughter, niece, mother, wife, scholar. This collection is a delicious, intimate and transgressive exploration of complex identity; having read it, I feel fresh and whole.”
—adrienne maree brown, Author of Emergent Strategy & Grievers
Cover art by Amy Law
“And what if someone were to offer you her girlhood and her motherhood, her hidden knives and her soft places, her earliest afro-puertorican memories and her current pandemic-scape strategies? What then? In black god mother this body Raina Leon offers what a god mother should offer, a portal to infinite divine possibility, a safe space to learn something new, a multi-faceted generosity. These are poems that mother, mentor and mend and break open again. Leon offers us everything and so we have to decide. What will we do with it?”
—Alexis Pauline Gumbs (editor of Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines and author of Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals)
“Mothering has never been easy. And learning to mother oneself back to wholeness and healing while also trying to mother one's own children even harder. In Raina León's collection, however, we are able to see motherhood, and in particular Black motherhood, in all its fullness and complexity, with all its joys and fears in all its tenderness and trauma wrapped in the language of poetry and prayer only a true priestess like León could conjure. black god mother this body is a soft and sharp meditation on Black motherhood, colorism, identity, ancestry, and what it means to heal and nurture our inner child. In this striking collection of lyrical prose poems, fragments of memories, and colorful collages, León explores what it means to mother our past and present selves, our children, our memories, and our ancestors even in the face of unspeakable trauma, violence, and uncertainty. When she thinks she can't find the language to express or make sense of these mother wounds, León keeps cleaving and pruning away at her own past until she can get to the root of what it means to mother well always wondering: is memory the dance of mourning and love that survives long enough to bloom?”
—Jasminne Mendez, author of City without Altar