White Lung

When coal dust infiltrates the lungs of coal miners, we call that disease black lung. Kimberly O'Connor's debut collection, White Lung, illuminates how racism also permeates American air—hate, fear, and shame left in our wake. O'Connor breaks the silence our culture expects of white women. Her unflinching poems catalog how racial epithets can get passed down through a family, documenting a 2014 execution along the way as well as archiving events leading up to Roe V. Wade. O'Connor examines how the self might not only speak its own truths but open up spaces for more capacious truth.