Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water: Poems

Author:   E. Hughes
Publisher:   Haymarket Books
ISBN:  

9798888902608


Pages:   96
Publication Date:   15 October 2024
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

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Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water: Poems


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Overview

A debut collection of lyric poems interrogating the generational implications of the Great Migration to Northern California. Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water, a debut collection by E. Hughes, marries personal narrative with historical excavation to articulate the intricacies of Black familial love, life, and pain. Tracing the experiences of a southern Black family, their migration to the San Francisco Bay area, and the persistent anti-Blackness there (despite the state's insistence that it is/was not involved in the US' projects of imperialism or chattel slavery), Hughes illuminates the intersections of history, grief, and violence. At the book's heart is ""The Accounts of Mammy Pleasant,"" a persona poem written from the perspective of the formerly enslaved abolitionist and financier Mary Ellen Pleasant who is thought to have helped fund John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. Alongside this historical account, Hughes deftly weaves in the story of a contemporary Black family navigating the generational trauma resulting from the Great Migration: domestic violence and racialized violence, familial love and loyalty, the work of parenting, and the work of being a child. Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water reveals in its pages that, while many things have changed over time, ultimately the question of what ""freedom"" meant and looked like for Black people in the early 20th century retains the same murkiness and contradictions for Black people today.

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Author:   E. Hughes
Publisher:   Haymarket Books
Imprint:   Haymarket Books
ISBN:  

9798888902608


Pages:   96
Publication Date:   15 October 2024
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available   Availability explained
This item is yet to be released. You can pre-order this item and we will dispatch it to you upon its release.

Table of Contents

BLACK WOMEN STANDING ANKLE-DEEP IN PACIFIC WATER 1 I RAN UNTIL I COULD NO LONGER AFTER A BEATING  RIPPLING THROUGH THE DARK PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER TRIPTYCH RUPTURE IN MEMORY EVEN NOW NEGLECT OR BAPTISM LISTICLE I CALLED HOME IN JANUARY  BECKWOURTH PASS  AS HER FEET TAP THE BRASS PEDALS APORIA 2 THE ACCOUNTS OF MAMMY PLEASANT 3  HISTORIOGRAPHY  MEET CUTE IN REDWOOD CITY BAD HABIT MUST HAVE LEFT ITS MARK— ROUTINE BARBERSHOP MEET CUTE IN MENLO PARK MY MOTHER AT TWENTY-ONE THE NIGHT IS AN ERUPTION OF NEBULAS  HUSBAND HOME FROM THE MARINES  FAMILY LORE FUNERAL IN SAN JOSE, WE SLICED TOMATOES ELEGY  EVEN NOW— FORGIVENESS PANTOUM IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF HOME, THE ROAD OUR PAST BOWED LIKE THE BRANCHES OF A MADRONE TREE EPILOGUE  BIRTHS AND DEATHS: A CHRONOLOGY NOTES

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Author Information

E. Hughes' poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Rumpus, Guernica, Poet Lore, Indiana Review, and Gulf Coast Magazine-among others. They are a Cave Canem fellow and have been a finalist for the 2021 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, longlisted for the 2021 Granum Fellowship Prize, and a semifinalist of the 2022 and 2023 92Y Discovery Contest. In 2021, they received their MFA+MA from the Litowitz Creative Writing Program at Northwestern University. Currently, Hughes is a PhD student in Philosophy at Emory University studying black aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralism.

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