Description
Book SynopsisThis harvest of poems is inspired by the plant medicine latent in Gossypium Herbeceum, or Cotton Root Bark, which was used by enslaved Black women to induce labor, cure reproductive ailments and end unwanted pregnancies. Through an arrangement of stories, secrets and memories experienced, read, heard, reimagined and remixed, gossypiin reckons with a peculiar yet commonplace inheritance of violation, survival and self-possession. In this way, Ra Malika Imhotep invites us to lean in and listen good as the text interrupts the narrative silence around sexual harm, sickness, and the marks they make on black femme subjectivity. Within these pages, the poet is joined by a “sticky trickster-self” named Lil Cotton Flower who tells of their own origins and endings in the Black vernacular traditions of the griot and the gossip. Interspersed throughout the collection, Black feminist wisdoms and warnings meld with the poets own yearnings and Lil Cotton Flower’s tall tales. Gossypiin is an offering towards the holding and healing of Black beings that exceed the confines of their own bodies.
Trade Review"Imhotep’s poems are lyrical, sung through a mouth which holds the South like an overripe peach, squeezing joy through gnashing teeth. The poems are a voyeuristic remixed antebellum collection of stories and wisdom, both written and gossiped, supported by archival references that satisfy intellectual curiosity. Reading the book feels like an act of voyeurism as we glimpse Imhotep’s personal history as they leap, surefooted, between emotion and history, between verse and body." --David van der Beek,
Electric Lit
