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Overview

2022 NAACP Image Award Winner

Crystal Wilkinson combines a deep love for her rural roots with a passion for language and storytelling in this compelling collection of poetry and prose about girlhood, racism, and political awakening, imbued with vivid imagery of growing up in Southern Appalachia. In Perfect Black, the acclaimed writer muses on such topics as motherhood, the politics of her Black body, lost fathers, mental illness, sexual abuse, and religion. It is a captivating conversation about life, love, loss, and pain, interwoven with striking illustrations by her long-time partner, Ronald W. Davis.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780813151168
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Publication date: 08/03/2021
Pages: 112
Sales rank: 972,742
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Crystal Wilkinson is the Poet Laureate of Kentucky. She is the author of The Birds of Opulence, winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award; Blackberries, Blackberries, winner of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature; and Water Street, a finalist for both the UK's Orange Prize for Fiction and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. The winner of a 2020 USA Artist Fellowship, she serves as associate professor of English at the University of Kentucky.

Table of Contents

1. Foreword by Nikky Finney
2. Section 1
3. Terrain
4. Baptism (Flatwoods, Kentucky, 1972)
5. Cousin
6. Black Rapunzel
7. Asking about My Mother
8. The Water Witch on Salvation
9. The Water Witch on Invasion
10. The Water Witch on Reading
11. O Tobacco
12. The Visit
13. Dig If You Will the Picture
14. Slow Dance
15. The Creek
16. Section 2
17. My Father Was a City
18. Beyond the White Canvas
19. August 9, 1974
20. Wet Nurse
21. The Bath
22. Dropsy
23. Death March
24. Dear Johnny P
25. Mother's Day
26. Bones
27. Ole Fashioned
28. Black Farmer
29. Press
30. Dirge
31. Black Body
32. A Meditation on Grief
33. On Being Country
34. Section 3
35. Bloodroot
36. Kitchen Ghosts
37. Snow Falls Like a Scorned Woman's Tears
38. Black & Fat & Perfect
39. Witness
40. Coming of Age
41. Dance
42. Homestead
43. Heritage
44. Praise Song for the Kitchen Ghosts
45. Motherland
46. Winter
47. Notes & Acknowledgements

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Crystal Wilkinson's Perfect Black is powerful witch-work. In these cascading lyrics, Wilkinson casts her glittering net of protection over the bodies and hearts of every Black girl. The poet's past self, "a girl, not yet trouble," is a dreamer whose desires — for love and intellectual play, for spiritual radiance and sexual empowerment — still carry sweet potency. Here, Black Rapunzel lets down her miraculous ladders of wisdom and vision, while Black grandmothers and church ladies transform into sailboats, safe harbors. Read this book and swerve, in Wilkinson's "perfect cursive," along paths ancestral and deliciously strange." — Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia


"I can read time by my own shadow," Wilkinson writes, and she conjures these heart piercing, authentic poems from the very ground of her life, from the water, from the mountains, from history and memory. It is in every sense a very particular woman we meet in Perfect Black, and it takes the artistry of this very particular poet to also give voice to her forbears, challenge injustice, and offer us a vision of what is possible. Wilkinson's range is astonishing: lyrics, narratives, laments, prayers, reminiscences, and more. Equal parts light and heat, these poems are incandescent." — Richard Hoffman, author of Noon until Night


"If we are Black it should be Perfect. Crystal has shared a wonderful book. Curl up with a cup of soul and enjoy it." — Nikki Giovanni, Poet


"In the beautifully illustrated Perfect Black, when Silas, a water witching grandfather, does anything but read and when Crystal Wilkinson finds a familiar ache in Prince's wildness, you know just how married she is to everything country especially her people and you learn quickly that being country ain't a compliment nor an insult. It's a warning and a promise that has everything to do with folk ways. With the earth. And with truth — no matter how much it hurts. With the same authentic voices that anchor her fiction and twice the personal risks, these poems will hand wash you in the creek and leave you on the line to dry. Utilizing evocative cinematic images that walk right off the page so easily you can taste the seasonings, smell the honeysuckle, feel the blades of grass beneath your bare feet and hear Crystal's allegiance to mountains, creeks and people the color of tobacco from the very first line." — Frank X Walker, author of Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York


"There is an ambience in Crystal Wilkinson's Perfect Black that captures the nostalgic sentiment of place with all its complexities. Wilkinson's inner ear is prominent and pronounced, and within this poetry collection lies the embodiment of women who know the 'creek' and the 'looking-glass' and we, the reader, are innocuous within the words. Imagistically, we are shown what it means to grow up country, girl and Black behind the backdrop of Appalachia. I cannot think of a more authentic voice from the 'holla' than what Wilkinson gives us in Perfect Black." — Randall Horton author of {#289-128}: Poems


"Crystal Wilkinson is Black woman chameleon. Perfect Black proves its joyous heart and weight in devastating truth. Needle-like lines and language thread the Black tradition and southern resilience. This hip strong poetry moves within the spirits of mothers and grandmothers, and a woman's evolution takes center stage and gravity. Wilkinson has long shapeshifted between the literary worlds of prose and poetry. Fiction has reaped her brilliance long enough. It's poetry's turn!" — Parneshia Jones, author of Vessel

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