Khalisa Rae: “Ghost in a Black Girl's Throat” Review and Interview (Poetry)
Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat is a voice, long throttled, summoning ancestors for strength, for guidance, and for language to enable a radical articulation of self in a place of historical trauma. Rooted in the American South, Rae’s poems ask what it means to live and thrive as a Black queer woman in an American society that “will stitch your mouth the color / of patriarchy.” Rae’s masterful words perfectly articulate the double consciousness that comes with being forced to be “the bended knee in the boot of their American / Dream.”
Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat tells the cyclical story of language—language stolen, language overpowered and language reclaimed. “Collaring Our Native Tongues” details the collective trauma of native language(s) ripped from the tongues of its speakers just as the speakers were ripped from their land:
Our native tongues
crawl out of tight spaces and tumble
into silent cracks. We scavenge for substance,
but settle for the need to be heard. Search
for the words you tried to exterminate.
Transitioning to the present and from the plural to the singular first person, the speaker finds those words embedded into the folds of her ancestor’s faces in “Before I Speak to the Matriarchs”:
So many words
resting in the corners of [the matriarch’s] mouths,
Silent conversations exploding
in the wrinkle of their noses, heated
arguments in their widening eyes.
In “The Dance Hall of My Mother’s Womb,” the speaker is reminded she is still connected to those ancestors:
boom, bap, clack, clack, boom, bap
is the cadence of my ancestors.
Their vibrant metronome alive
in the sounds around me
…
These sounds are the pulse of my people
determined to make their vibration last,
determined to make their echo repeat.
In the midst of systemic trauma on a land already awash with significant historical trauma, Rae finds the language of resistance in the ghosts of these ancestors. But Ghost isn’t simply describing this trauma or bringing it to light; the book also actively resists the appropriation of Black language, culture and identity. In “Making Counterfeit Again”:
Our lingo isn’t for sale, so stop plagiarizing
our hood-speech, mainstreaming our “broken”
English.
…
This slang be sold out and never returning to shelves.
This dialect be discontinued, this black too high.
Out of reach.
In addition to being a subversion of Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, the poem effectively uses corporate sales language to expound on, and resist, the exploitative violences of capitalist America.
When a midwestern Black woman moves to the American South for college and encounters a violent history hidden in plain sight, she calls on the power of the past to get her through the present. In Rae’s skilled verse, ghosts become protectors and hauntings become sites for communion and healing. Written in and for a country looking to the past for greatness, Rae’s debut collection is a reminder of the voices, the screams, silenced in the building of America. It is a rally cry for a better future. Rae shows us the potential of a ghost unleashed in a Black girl’s throat.
— Saoirse
Guest Editor for Emerging Voices in Poetry
I also had the pleasure to chat with Khalisa about Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat and other matters. Check it out here:
Khalisa Rae is a poet, queer rights activist, journalist, and educator in Durham, North Carolina, and a graduate of the Queens University MFA program. Her chapbook, Real Girls Have Real Problems, was published in 2012, and her recent work has been seen in PANK, Sundog Lit, Crab Fat, Damaged Goods Press, Red Room Poetry’s New Shoots poetry anthology, Glass Poetry, TERSE., Luna Luna, The Hellebore, Homology Lit, Dancing Bear Books: WOMXN Anthology, Tishman Review, and Obsidian, among others. She was a Furious Flower Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Prize finalist and a winner of the Fem Lit Magazine Contest, Voicemail Poetry Contest, White Stag Publishing Contest, and Bright Wings Poetry Contest. Her debut collection Ghost in a Black Girl’s Throat was recently published by Red Hen Press and her next book Unlearning Eden is forthcoming from White Stag Publishing in Summer 2021. She is currently the Writing Center Director at Shaw University and the newest writer for NBC-BLK and Black Girl Nerds.