About the Book
Publication: 2024
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
A compelling exploration of how contemporary Black poets use persona and archival imagination to recover, reconstruct, and reimagine Black histories.
This post is part of the Books in Brief series, which features concise conversations with scholars about their books in African American literary studies.
1. What inspired you to pursue the lines of research and writing that resulted in this book?
There were many moments of inspiration and epiphany. That said, the genesis of this project was the critical thesis I was required to write while pursuing my MFA in Writing at Pacific University. It was then, immersed in my reading list while trying to figure out what exactly I might have to say, that I started to pick up on the thread of Black US historical persona poetry in the 2000s and 2010s.
2. What surprised you most during your research or writing process?
Being new to the process of writing a book, I was overwhelmed by the impossibility of offering a complete analysis. The more I learned, the closer I came to understanding not only what I didn’t know but also how much needed to be done if I were to fully explore every aspect of my topic—the poetry, the racial and cultural matters, the literary history, the applicable theory, etc. Thus, I had to learn how to narrow my scope and come to terms with what could be realistically accomplished.
3. What was the hardest decision you had to make while writing this book?
The book was originally organized around terminology from Toni Morrison’s “Unspeakable Things Unspoken.” As the project developed, the terminology began to no longer suit my argument. Yet, it was difficult to pivot away from it as I was emotionally tied to the terminology and loved having Morrison central in my analysis. Further, the change meant I needed to do a lot of work to revise the book’s framework and edit out the refences to the lecture that were no longer applicable.
4. What's one lesson you learned while producing this book that you'll carry into future projects?
As simple as it sounds, a major lesson that I learned and re-learned throughout the process is to ground my argument through clearly asserting my points early. I was often writing myself into discoveries, so I had to be very intentional and methodical about going back to rework the beginnings of sections and adjust topic sentences. This has gone more smoothly in subsequent projects.
5. If any come to mind, are there books in African American literary studies that you see your work in conversation with?
There are several excellent books exploring contemporary Black US poetry and poetics that were published around the same time as Another Throat that I hope the book is in conversation with and, together, are indicative of growing interest in recent Black US poetry, including Annette Debo’s The Necessary Past: Revising History in Contemporary African American Poetry (2024) and Laura Vrana’s Pitfalls of Prestige: Black Women and Literary Recognition (2024). There are also many books that I cited, and many that I did not have an occasion to cite, in the book that I admire and hope to be conversing with, such as Elizabeth Alexander’s The Black Interior (2004), Tony Bolden’s Afro-Blue: Improvisations in African American Poetry and Culture (2003), Kevin Quashie’s The Sovereignty of Quiet: Beyond Resistance in Black Culture (2012) and Black Aliveness, Or a Poetics of Being (2021), Derik Smith’s Robert Hayden in Verse: New Histories of African American Poetry and the Black Arts Era (2018), and much of Emily Ruth Rutter’s work (though here specifically I would note Black Celebrity: Contemporary Representations of Postbellum Athletes and Artists (2018). Further, Rambsy’s work—in particular Bad Men: Creative Touchstones of Black Writers (2020), his essays, and the Cultural Front blog—continue to be instrumental and inspirational to my research and development.
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