Finna: Poems

List Price: $17.00
One World (Aug 11, 2020)
Poetry, Paperback, 128 pages
    ISBN: 9780593132456Publisher: Penguin Random House
    Parent Company: Bertelsmann

    Description of Finna: Poems

    Sharp, lyrical poems celebrating the Black vernacular—its influence on pop culture, its necessity for familial survival, its rite in storytelling and in creating the safety found only within its intimacy

    Definition of finna, created by the author: fin-na /ˈfinə/ contraction: (1) going to; intending to [rooted in African American Vernacular English] (2) eye dialect spelling of "fixing to" (3) Black possibility; Black futurity; Blackness as tomorrow

    These poems consider the brevity and disposability of Black lives and other oppressed people in our current era of emboldened white supremacy, and the use of the Black vernacular in America’s vast reserve of racial and gendered epithets. Finna explores the erasure of peoples in the American narrative; asks how gendered language can provoke violence; and finally, how the Black vernacular, expands our notions of possibility, giving us a new language of hope:

    nothing about our people is romantic
    & it shouldn’t be. our people deserve
    poetry without meter. we deserve our
    own jagged rhythm & our own uneven
    walk towards sun. you make happening happen.
    we happen to love. this is our greatest
    action.

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    About Nate Marshall

    Read more about this author on their profile page: Biography of Nate Marshall