TFBWL BOOKMAIL 🖤🎉 “I do know the power that other Black poets have given me: Enlightenment. Scrutiny. Camaderie. Words to subvert fear.” - Remica Bingham-Risher 💫💫 Thank you so much to award winning poet Remica Bingham-Risher for sending me a copy of her latest book - SOUL CULTURE/BLACK POETS, BOOKS, AND QUESTIONS THAT GREW ME UP, published by Beacon Press, 2022. 🖤🖤 It’s descriptor reads - A poet by heart in trade, Rebecca Bingham-Risher amplifies the voices of writers who inspired her to cultivate a writing life of her own. Following a revelation in graduate school, Bingham-Risher, a 20 year old deeply invested in questioning and with dreams of becoming a poet, spent the next decade conducting interviews with 10 of the most critically acclaimed African-American poets in the nation, including Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, Patricia Smith, and Natasha Tretheway, among others. In that time, she began teaching, fell in love, and raise the family, while asking how art can shape us. SOUL CULTURE is her homage to these poets and artists who came before her, inspired her, and changed her irrevocably. Each essay is thematically inspired by an interview with one of her poetic heroes, and she uses quotes drawn from these conversations to illuminate their paths, as well as her life and work as cocreated alongside each elder. Noting the frustrating tendency for artists of color to be pigeonholed into the confines of various frameworks and ideologies, Bingham-Risher reveals the multitudes contained within Black poets, both past and present. By capturing the radical love ethic of Blackness amid the incessant fear that comes with Black life, she has amassed not only a wealth of knowledge about contemporary literary movement, but a historical record of Bblack poetry throughout the latter half of the 21st-century. Examining cultural traditions, myths, and music from Beyoncé to the Four Tops, Bingham-Risher reflects on the enduring gifts of art & community. No one should be afraid to step into their own desires and come to an understanding that so much is revolutionary about love. If you have ever felt alone on your journey, the words of these poets are for you.