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The upcoming, empowering poetry anthology The BreakBeat Poets Volume 2: Black Girl Magic, edited by Mahogany L. Browne, Idrissa Simmonds, and Chicago poetry staple Jamila Woods, quickly manifested itself from a short conversation between Browne and Kevin Coval, one of the editors of the first BreakBeat Poets anthology, a collection of hip-hop poetry that came out in 2015. Although it's billed as a sequel, the book-which will be released in paperback on April 3 and is available as an e-book now-can stand by itself: its dense, entrancing, necessary works by more than 60 black women poets create a black-girl-centric world of their own. Along with Woods's contribution, "My Afropuffs," and Browne's powerful "If 2017 Was a Poem Title," the book includes a plethora of sensual, sexy, painful, superreal subject matter. That includes Venessa Marco's "Offwhite," which faces the very personal black topic of colorism, and "Big Black Bitch" by Bianca Lynne Spriggs, which tells the story of the first black woman mail carrier, Mary Fields. The book provides a well-rounded look at what it means to be a black woman and in the process serves as a platform for our voices and bodies, revealing our maneuvers through the world as deeply relevant to and deserving of literary space.
