works
“White’s collection trains the ear and eye of a master poet toward some of the most foundational traumas in the modern world.”
—Nate Marshall, author of FINNA
new from artress bethany white
A Black Doe in the Anthropocene: Poems
A Black Doe in the Anthropocene: Poems confronts brutal truths unearthed by the present-day descendant of an enslaved American family.
Following her ancestors’ enslavement in 1700s Virginia and North Carolina, White weaves together data from Hairston family plantation archives and her Black Hairston mother’s inherited oral slave narrative to create searing poems on a history of Scottish genes and African ancestry. In doing this sacred work, White expands the historical narrative far beyond Hairston plantation grounds to examine the lives of freed people who emigrated back to Africa to reestablish themselves in a Black nation, and to also chronicle her own life in the US.
Invoking themes of heritage and the lives of mixed-race Hairstons, this collection outlines the hardships many emancipated people faced in the US as well as the ways Americans continue to encounter vestiges of institutional enslavement.
An essential addition to ongoing conversations on race and racial (in)justice, A Black Doe in the Anthropocene lays bare our intertwined inheritances and what we leave in our wake for future generations connected by blood, nationality, or both.
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Author
My Afmerica
Winner of the 2018 Trio Award
My Afmerica explores the tensions and complexities of interracial family relationships in a nation still divided by racism and still haunted by its history of enslavement. The speaker relates historical events against the backdrop of her interracial family—white, black, and mixed-race – and her worries, hopes, and dreams for all. Yet, in the everyday life events related by the speaker, there is healing and movement towards an America/Afmerica—one that doesn’t dismiss the difficult past, and embraces a future of equality and hope.
Co-Editor
Wheatley at 250:
Black Women Poets Re-imagine the Verse of Phillis Wheatley Peters
This collection celebrates the 250th anniversary of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), by gathering the voices of 20 Black female poets to reimagine the work of Phillis Wheatley Peters.
Author
Survivor's Guilt
Essays on Race and American Identity
NEW EDITION COMING SOON! Artress Bethany White has written a beautiful book that shimmers with bravery on every page. In tackling race, she interrogates and informs, startles and prods, and implicates us all–forcing us to see ourselves through multi-faceted prisms of American identity. Using personal and familial narratives from her own ‘tangled racial threads’ as our intimate guide, White helps us understand this traumatized cultural moment by weaving together harsh truths with poetic language and fierce insight.
Author
Fast Fat Girls in Pink Hot Pants: Poems
New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee… these are the regions and places that provide both content and context for Fast Fat Girls In Pink Hot Pants. White’s poetry takes a timely look at why tradition, race, and economics across regional lines continue to have relevance for Americans in the twenty-first century. Her narrative journey is at once personal and universal in scope and a must-read for anyone who has made that sojourn across the Mason-Dixon Line.
Contributing Author
Dear Yusef:
Essays, Letters, and Poems, For and About One Mr. Komunyakaa
This carefully and generously curated mosaic of essays, letters, and poems reveals the profound impact that poet Yusef Komunyakaa has had on poets, educators, and readers worldwide. Together these pieces honor one of the most influential writers of the last half century, one, it turns out, who is as beloved for his teaching as he is celebrated for his creative work.
Contributing Author
Why I Wrote This Poem
62 Poets on Creating Their Works
An anthology of a different sort, this volume presents a representative sample of contemporary American poems in 2021, with a road map of their origins. Bringing a diversity of styles and sensibilities, 62 poets from across the United States—some well known, some up-and-coming—illuminate their craft. Each contributes one poem, accompanied by an essay discussing their creative process and how the verse came to fruition.
Contributing Author
Seeking Home
Marginalization and Representation in Appalachian Literature and Song
Appalachian people are frequently depicted as poorly educated whites who isolate themselves in mountain hollows. In Seeking Home, editors Leslie Harper Worthington and Jürgen E. Grandt turn that stereotype upside down by showcasing Appalachia’s ethnic diversity through a lively collection of essays discussing fiction, poetry, letters, and songs. Appalachian music, including Cherokee song and dance, a discussion of Appalachian mining songs, and an examination of recording technology and authenticity. Seeking Home confirms that just as there are many Souths, there are also many Appalachias. The region is multifaceted, multicultural, and all we have to do is be willing to examine the variety.
Contributing Author
Literary Expressions of African Spirituality
With a focus on the connected spiritual legacy of the black Atlantic, Literary Expressions of African Spirituality leads the way to more comprehensive trans-geographical studies of African spirituality in black art. With essays focusing on African spirituality in creative works by several trans-Atlantic black authors across varying locations in the Ameri-Atlantic diaspora, this collection reveals and examines their shared spiritual cosmology. Diasporic in scope, Literary Expressions of African Spirituality offers new readings of black literatures through the prism of spiritual memory that survived the damaging impact of trans-Atlantic slaving.
poems + prose
- “A Black Doe in the Anthropocene” and "Runners: A Ghazal for Our Times" — The Rumpus
- "A Creased Page from a Plantation Ledger” — Kweli
- "Dear Ancestors: On The Occasion of Visiting the Plantation Which Once Governed Your Lives” — The Banyan Review (Issue 9, Spring 2022)
- "Crops: Tobacco,” "Pancakes Keep Coming to Mind: A Sestina Commemorating the Demise of Aunt Jemima on the Pancake Box," and "Resurrection" — Poetry Foundation
- "A Bondage Nocturne,” "Branching," and "A Meditation on the Toppling of the Confederate Statue 'Silent Sam'" — Green Mountains Review
- "Outlander Blues” — Pangyrus
- "What I Will and Will Not Take From a Slaver Ancestor” — Scoundrel Time
- "Plantation Wedding” — Solstice (Spring 2018)
- "Everything Resides in a Name” — Pleiades Magazine
- "An American Moor in Spain” and "Role Reversal" — The Account
- "A Lynching in North Carolina" — Tupelo Quarterly