Black poet confronts violence, truth
Mason-John’s new collection lays bare messy consequences of ‘multi-generational ... trauma’
“I was your Negro/Captured and sold/I am still your negro/Arrested and killed.”
The image gracing the cover of the book is that of a Black woman, hair pulled up in sections that become branches topped by cotton bolls. Originally a sculpture made of wood, copper, tin, bronze and tar, Alison Saar’s White Guise (2018) — and the artist’s other works spanning 35 years — often addresses themes of race, gender and spirituality.
Like Saar, writer Valerie Mason-John touches on those themes, demanding that readers witness the consequences of the ongoing, “multi-generational and epigenetic trauma”. A public speaker, and award-winning author of eight books, this poetry collection grabs you.
Readers are confronted with the violence of the Black experience, from the haunting spectre of slavery to the current and ongoing terrorizing of the Black diaspora at the hands of the police. All of the messy, the painful, the enraging — what we’re conditioned to believe as shameful — is laid bare for the readers and brought to the fore. Many of these accounts traverse various places — whether in the U.K., the U.S., or Canada — and the bluntness and force of her words arrest you. The poems within, a blunt object, landing and falling on exposed and raw parts.
We are reminded in MasonJohn’s Self Portrait 2 that the Black experience is intersectional, that her “Black Queer Body is still incarcerated by the white, male, heteronormative gaze” and that “… Queerness is part of my identity … is what we reclaim.”
Mason-John also speaks to sexual violence, the #MeToo movement, addiction and disordered eating in the work. These poems are prefaced and narrated in part by Yaata, the Supreme Being of the Indigenous Kono of Sierra Leone. Yaata channels our collective and ancestral laments, yowls and groans. And by the end of this collection, Yaata counsels: You have always been home: wherever your body is, you are home. Let nobody take your home away from you with their brutality.
Many might likely critique the necessity of having poet
George Elliot Clarke introduce her collection, followed by two didactic essays. Borrowing from oral tradition, utilizing various poetic forms such as haiku, villanelles and sonnets, this collection requires no introduction and can stand on its own fierce voice, and truth. Mason-John exposes the lie of tolerance and equality, points to the violence of the systems that Black people navigate, and provides historical and current evidence (Windrush, or the first lesbian sexual assault case in Canada).
Some may have to contend with the discomfort this collection might elicit as one’s ignorance is exposed. But by the time they have finished the entire collection, they will have understood the truth.