Dont Call Us Dead, Danez Smith
Dont Call Us Dead, Danez Smith
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Don't Call Us Dead
Poems

Author: Danez Smith

Narrator: Danez Smith

Unabridged: 1 hr 15 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/14/2020


Synopsis

Finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry

Winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection

Award-winning poet Danez Smith is a groundbreaking force, celebrated for deft lyrics, urgent subjects, and performative power. Don't Call Us Dead opens with a heartrending sequence that imagines an afterlife for black men shot by police, a place where suspicion, violence, and grief are forgotten and replaced with the safety, love, and longevity they deserved here on earth. Smith turns then to desire, mortality—the dangers experienced in skin and body and blood—and a diagnosis of HIV positive. "Some of us are killed / in pieces," Smith writes, "some of us all at once." Don't Call Us Dead is an astonishing and ambitious collection, one that confronts, praises, and rebukes America—"Dear White America"—where every day is too often a funeral and not often enough a miracle.

About Danez Smith

Danez Smith is the author of Don't Call Us Dead, winner of the Forward Prize for Best Collection and a finalist for the National Book Award, and [insert] boy, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. They live in Minneapolis.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Roxane on April 02, 2017

This book is poetry as fierce fire. There is such intelligence and fervor in these poems about black men and their imperiled bodies, gay men and their impassioned bodies, what it means to be HIV positive, and so much more. Every poem impressed me, and particularly the epic poems. The level of craft......more

Goodreads review by Lala on March 13, 2020

Book 3 of 30 for my 30 day reading challenge! Flawless. Period.......more

Goodreads review by s.penkevich on February 23, 2021

Anything is possible / in a place where you can burn a body / with less outrage than a flag Since the day I purchased the wonderful Don’t Call Us Dead by Danez Smith, it has accompanied me everywhere in my shoulder bag. It is a collection that has felt like a companion for a year now, travelling acr......more

Goodreads review by Thomas on January 10, 2019

A stunning poetry collection about the black queer experience, Danez Smith captures the dangers of police brutality and HIV with visceral imagery and a heartrending call for change. Their focus on the embodied effects of racism and homophobia makes this collection pulse with a beautiful, searing fir......more