When Rap Spoke Straight to God
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A book-length poem navigating belief, black lives, the tragedies of Trump, and the boundaries of being a woman.
"When Rap Spoke Straight to God is utterly transporting. In language both elevated and slangy, saucy and tender, Dawson lovingly weaves the reader around her finger.” —Jennifer Egan
When Rap Spoke Straight to God isn’t sacred or profane, but a chorus joined in a single soliloquy, demanding to be heard. There’s Wu-Tang and Mary Magdelene with a foot fetish, Lil’ Kim and a self-loving Lilith. Slurs, catcalls, verses, erasures—Dawson asks readers, “Just how far is it to n****r?” Both grounded and transcendent, the book is reality and possibility. Dawson’s work has always been raw; but, When Rap Spoke Straight to God is as blunt as the answer to that earlier question: “Here.” Sometimes abrasive and often abraded, Dawson doesn’t flinch.
A mix of traditional forms where sonnets mash up with sestinas morphing to heroic couplets, When Rap Spoke Straight to God insists that while you may recognize parts of the poem’s world, you can’t anticipate how it will evolve.
With a literal exodus of light in the book’s final moments, When Rap Spoke Straight to God is a lament for and a celebration of blackness. It’s never depression; it’s defiance—a persistent resistance. In this book, like Wu-Tang says, the marginalized “ain’t nothing to f--- with.”
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Dawson (The Small Blades Hurt) grapples with the weight of identity in her brief third collection, expounding upon what it means to be a black woman in a country ruled by institutions of whiteness. This single lyrical poem, nominally divided into four parts, reveals a blackness born from resilience rather than suffering. Dawson writes of the everyday violence inflicted on black bodies: "Today, the paper boasted this / Five Local Policemen Tied to KKK / italicized as if to shout, It's new." Later, she paints a scene of police brutality involving her own father, when he "tried/ to race a smoke on the side of the house he thought/ we couldn't see, maybe hoping the wind/ would wash off the smell of a cop's nightshift, maybe/ refill the sockets of his knocked-out teeth." The physical and emotional violence that characterizes white supremacy simultaneously attempts to reduce black womanhood to a singular narrative: pain. Dawson writes, "It's then/ I'm most colored./ Bleeding." Despite the pressures of a dominating culture determined to see her fail, Dawson can "walk through civilizations/ of fire ants. No lamentations." For the poet, the scars of history are powerful reminders of how blackness rises above the cruelty of oppression, always reaching for the light.
