Don't Call Us Dead

By Danez Smith

Subjects: Création parlée, Gay men, Violence envers, Hommes noirs américains, Infections à VIH, Poetry (poetic works by one author), Male Homosexuality, Transgender people, Poésie, African Americans, English & college success -> english -> poetry, Spoken word poetry, African american, LGBTQ HIV/AIDS, HIV infections, General, Homosexuels masculins, African American, African American men, Violence against, POETRY, Gay erotic poetry, HIV Infections, Transgenres, Transgender Persons, American, Poets, American poetry, collection:triangle-award-gender=finalist, Medicine in Literature, LGBTQ poetry, Poetry, HIV-positive men, Hommes séropositifs, Noirs américains, Medicine in literature, Médecine dans la littérature

Description: Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality--the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood--and a diagnosis of HIV positive. Some of us are killed / in pieces, Smith writes, some of us all at once. Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America--Dear White America--where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.