Wednesday, February 16, 2022 5pm to 8pm
About this Event
Join the Office for Institutional Diversity and Inclusion for a poetry reading and discussion by DaMaris B. Hill in honor of Black History Month.
DaMaris B. Hill is an award-winning and critically acclaimed author of A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing. Her new book of narrative-in-verse takes a personal and historical look at the experience of Black girlhood.
In Breath Better Spent, DaMaris B. Hill hoists her childhood self onto her shoulders, together taking in the landscape of Black girlhood in America. At a time when Black girls across the country are increasingly vulnerable to unjust violence, unwarranted incarceration, and unnoticed disappearance, Hill chooses to celebrate and protect the girl she carries, using the narrative-in-verse style to revisit her youth.
Hill states: "These poems reflect a kind of meditation detailing some of the realities of Black girlhood in national and global contexts. Many of the poems are semi-autobiographical and extend from the collective “knowing” of Black girlhood culture, taking special care to talk about recent Black girlhood experiences that I have encountered in my “middle-aged womanhood”. “
“I spent the twin pandemics in a state of intermittent grieving and reflection. I thought a lot about my childhood, youth and girlhood. Black girlhood is “the representation, memories and lived experiences of being in a body marked as youthful, Black and female.” With this in mind, I began ignoring age and sequential time as markers of youth. Instead, I began indulging in the joys and memories of youth. I questioned how intersecting identities (like race, gender, sex orientation, class, national identity etc.) impact how we experience/express youth in poetry. What are the possibilities in using poetry to engage in intergenerational public conversations about youth in a contemporary context and beyond?”
This event will be a reading and discussion about youth in the context of current events.
Copies of the book will be available for purchase.