POETRY REVIEW: Black Girl, Call Home by Jasmine Mans #poetry #blackgirlcallhome #review

It’s been some time since I have truly gotten into a poetry collection, but when I go back to it I always find something incredibly calming and powerful about poetry. In Jasmine Mans’ collection Black Girl, Call Home, there isn’t a single word, line break, formatting choice, punctuation mark, or blank space that isn’t dripping with meaning.

This collection is a song for black women, from grief, heartache, trauma, love, motherhood, nostalgia, healing, strength, survival, and history. The poems aren’t meant for me, and I felt gratitude to be able to take them in and learn from the collection. I started reading this traditionally but after learning that Jasmine Mans had narrated the spoken word format for the audiobook, I purchased that version and it really added a different experience to her work.

In the written form, I enjoyed the way Mans used different formats to add a depth to each poem that felt unique to that experience. Hearing the poems in Mans’ voice was also incredibly powerful, because the strength and emotion comes through. I think there is a certain magic to spoken word poetry, hearing when the poet speeds up, slows down, gets louder or softer, and pauses. Sometimes the pauses after an emotional line carry the weight of the world in them.

There is an incredible amount of vulnerability in this collection, and it’s one that I’d recommend for a variety of readers. I think poetry can be intimidating but I didn’t find this collection to be at all. This is also a collection that I felt weaving back and then forwards again as I read more really brought different meaning to poems I’d already read. The poems are filled with references to pop culture and iconic or notable figures. Some I felt I probably even missed because Mans doesn’t always call them by name.

Every line carries with it a weight of thought and emotion. When addressing the choice to cast Halle Bailey as the Little Mermaid, Mans says:

“When they tell the Black girl she can’t play mermaid

ask them,

what their people know about holding their breath underwater.”

The poem titled “Missing Girls” is formatted as a crossword puzzle full of the names of missing girls. Particularly impactful are how many names you search for but never find. The poem itself felt to me like a comment both on many of the girls’ names being in plain sight but not seen, and also on all the names that aren’t included because so many forget or don’t pay attention.

Another poem titled “Serena” speaks to the inequity and objectification Serena Williams faced relative to other athletes in her field:

“The will place rules on your

body,               say it’s a distraction from

their game,

                        as if they know better than you

how your bones should wear their own body”

I could go on and on, it’s hard to review a book of poetry because there are so many I want to speak on. There are a sequence of four poems that speak about Whitney Houston that are sobering. In the second, Mans talks about the iconic voice but many of the cries no one listened to. In the next, she talks about a woman who experienced two deaths but only one life. In the last one, Mans talks about the hologram of Whitney Houston that toured:

“Black body still

under contract.”

I can’t recommend this collection enough. Particularly for those who are used to studying 18^th and 19^th century poetry in school and found it hard to relate to, I think you’ll find this to be much more contemporary and powerful. The spoken word format in the audiobook is also a meaningful way to experience this collection, though I enjoyed the printed version as well.

About the Collection

From spoken word poet Jasmine Mans comes an unforgettable poetry collection about race, feminism, and queer identity.

With echoes of Gwendolyn Brooks and Sonia Sanchez, Mans writes to call herself—and us—home. Each poem explores what it means to be a daughter of Newark, and America–and the painful, joyous path to adulthood as a young, queer Black woman.

Black Girl, Call Home is a love letter to the wandering Black girl and a vital companion to any woman on a journey to find truth, belonging, and healing.