Reading the Rainbow: Queer Poets of Color

lapetitepritt

May 25

Hello, bookworms!

I am sorry for not having posted this review on Monday, but on Saturday and Sunday I was at the Salone Internazionale del Libro di Torino, which devastated me. It was fun, but extremely tiring (especially because I had my backpack and a tote bag full of books for two days); the organisation was not the best, admittedly, but I still managed to attend an event I organised with my classmates, another event and to meet the people who work for the publisher where I am going to start my stage in July. I also bought/acquired way too many books and met some friends, so I am considering the fair a success as a whole.

Anyways, today I am here to review Queer Poets of Color, an anthology of poems by different queer and POC authors. I have found out about this one on Books with Chloe YouTube channel and I wad very intrigued by it. I am not much of a poetry reader, let alone a poetry reviewer (I apologise in advance for this), but I still wanted to talk about this book, because I think it is very appropriate for my series of reviews of Reading the Rainbow.

So, without further ado, let's get started!

About the book
Title: Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color
Author: Christopher Soto et al.
Publisher: Nightboat Books
Publication date: 1 January 2018
Page number: 208

Plot, as stated on Goodreads
In 2014, Christopher Soto and Lambda Literary Foundation founded the online journal Nepantla, with the mission to nurture, celebrate, and preserve diversity within the queer poetry community, including contributions as diverse in style and form, as the experiences of QTPOC in the United States. Now, Nepantla will appear for the first time in print as a survey of poetry by queer poets of color throughout U.S. history, including literary legends such as Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, June Jordan, Ai, and Pat Parker alongside contemporaries such as Natalie Diaz, Ocean Vuong, Danez Smith, Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, Robin Coste Lewis, Joy Harjo, Richard Blanco, Erika L. Sanchez, Jericho Brown, Carl Phillips, Tommy Pico, Eduardo C. Corral, Chen Chen, and more.

My rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Review
I don't know how this review will be structured. As I said, I am not much of a poetry reader and I don't think I've ever reviewed a poetry collection on my blog before. Before we start, I want to clarify that my rating is only due to a personal preference and there's actually nothing wrong with this book. Also, I am really glad this book exists, because I know it has been very important for a lot of people and it will continue to be.

I think my two main issues with the book were the following: 1) I didn't have the time to get acquainted with one author's style that we were already moving on to the next poem; I tend to prefer poetry collections that are written by the same author, because I have time to absorb the words better, if that make sense; 2) I found the whole book a bit too sex-centered; this is totally a me thing, and I know most people wouldn't be bothered, but I am not the biggest fan of poetry about sex, since I don't enjoy metaphorical talk of it. Even in prose books, I hate when authors don't use the "basic" words for sex, penis, vagina and so on, so imagine how much I can enjoy poems about sex…

Another thing that made the reading experience hard for me, was the typography of certain poems; they were too complicated for me, and I couldn't read them, especially seeing English is not my first language, so I struggled with some choices. This is of course, once again, a me problem and I am not saying the authors should have changed their style, but I wanted to mention it, since it's part of the reason why I didn't like the book.

However, there were also things I liked, such as the way the importance of food in certain cultures was underlined. Being Italian, I can understand how much food can be important to your identity; of course, it is not the same, but I really appreciated the poems that featured food as a main topic, because I think you can learn so much about a culture from their dishes and the history behind them. I also appreciated the poems discussing police brutality, because it is such a day-to-day topic, sadly, that seeing it written in verse had a huge impact.

Now, I am going to mention some of my favourite poems:

One Day I'll Love Ocean Vuong by Ocean Vuong;
Power by Audre Lorde;
Actually, Yes Everything is About Race by Madison Johnson;
To the American Psychiatric Association - 1973 by Jewelle Gomez.

In my notes I also wrote "The poem by Meredith Talusan gave me shivers", but unfortunately I didn't write down the title of their poem, nor what it was about. The poem by Audre Lorde was probably the most impactful one for me, and I also wrote down some verses, which I wanted to share with you: "The difference between poetry and rhetoric / is being ready to kill / yourself / instead of your children". This section of the poem was definitely my favourite and I would like to pick up other things by Audre Lorde. Also, I am very happy I enjoyed the one by Ocean Vuong, since I have some of his books on my TBR, especially On Earth We Were Briefly Gorgeous, which I am hoping to read this year.

So, we've reached the end of this weird review. I don't know if I recommend this book, I think I'd recommend it to people who are strong readers of poetry, because I think they would enjoy it way more than I did. Anyhow, if you decide to pick this book up, be sure to google its trigger warnings, as there are many.

I will see you soon with a new review. Thanks for reading this complete mess!

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