BlackGround

This work begins by employing blackout poetry - a genre of this craft in which words are omitted or reformed within a primary source text so that both a poem and an illustration might emerge - as a tool of deconstructing racist rhetoric and derogatory prose used to misinterpret and denigrate the Black experience.

This work is rooted in the belief that the spoken and written word have power to shape the same minds that interpret the shape of reality. This work takes up the mantle of revisiting and revising the language of past and present white supremacist power structures so words given to describe Blackness are commanded by none other than those chosen to carry it.