Daughters of Harriet - Paperback

by Cynthia Parker-Ohene (Author)

Finalist, 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry
Finalist, 2022 Foreword INDIES for Poetry
Finalist, 2022 Golden Poppy Award for Poetry
Finalist, 2022 San Francisco/Nomadic Literary Award for Poetry

Drawing inspiration from the life of Harriet Tubman, Cynthia Parker-Ohene's poetic narratives follow a historical arc of consciousness of Black folks: mislaid in potters' fields and catalogued with other misbegotten souls, now unsettled as the unknown Black denominator. Who loved them? Who turned them away? Who dismembered their souls? In death, they are the institutionalized marked Black bodies assigned to parcels, scourged beneath plastic sheets identified as a number among Harriets as black, marked bodies. These poems speak to how the warehousing of enslaved and somewhat free beings belies their humanity through past performances in reformatories, workhouses, and hospitals for the negro insane. To whom did their Black lives belong? How are Black grrls socialized within the family to be out in the world? What is the beingness of Black women? How have the Harriets--the descended daughters of Harriet Tubman--confronted issues of caste and multiple oppressions? These poems give voice to the unspeakable, the unreachable, the multiple Black selves waiting to become.

Author Biography

Cynthia Parker-Ohene is anabolitionist, cultural worker, and therapist. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Saint Mary's College of California, where she was the Chester Aaron Scholar for Excellence in Creative Writing. Her poetry has appeared in such journals as Black Warrior Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Kweli, and Green Mountains Review, as well as in the anthologiesBlack Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature and The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South. She has received fellowships and support from Tin House, Callaloo, the Postgraduate Vermont College of Fine Arts, Juniper, and the Hurston-Wright Foundation and elsewhere.