If You Loved ‘The Poet X’, Here's Nine Books to Check Out Next.

The world is almost peaceful when you stop trying to understand it.

There's something quite triggering, in both a good and bad way, about reading books that speak to one's lived experiences and trauma. They can be very therapeutic in educating you on the parts of your life and memories that need to be worked on, but they can also sidetrack you when you've lived most of that life believing that you've moved past something.

That's the case with most of the books selected here: I can distinctly place them at the exact point in my life when they were read simply by the emotions I ascribed to them and the impact they had on me at the time. Their salience is also something that can be easily invoked just by remembering what I was probably going through. I've since done some work, albeit bit not professional as most people would suggest—a girl cannot afford that at this point. However, the purpose of this is to take your therapy where you can get it; and as it stands, most people find the power to deal with their problems through escapism, to inhabit worlds away from their own and forget for a bit.

In The Poet X, we are introduced to the young sultry and opinionated poet, Xiomara Batista. This book reads like the pages of her journal where she undresses herself and her life, her experiences as a teenage girl with a body that seems to exist to be coveted and spoken about by entitled boys and men in her neighbourhood and admonished by her devout Catholic mother—both of which are impositions she simply cannot escape. Navigating themes of identity as a tool for understanding and misunderstanding people, this book, written in a verse style of writing, sees Xiomara go through things that most young people go through and heal through her pain with use of words and poetry as an escape and a form of self-expression. It sees us being introduced to her twin brother Xavier, to his own experiences as a young gay boy forced into the closet and struggling under their parents' thumb and expectations. I struggled with this book when I first tried to read it, but decided to try the audiobook instead, because of how beautyfully people on Bookstagram spoke about it. Listening to Elizabeth Acevedo's voice was a surreal experience, a kind of kinship that saw me relate with Xiomara who was going through things I was and had never gone through, but were somewhat relevant to my own experiences—see, like Xiomara, I understand the pressures of being scrutinised and expected to be a certain way and through her self-appointed duty of being her brother's keeper, I, too, felt it; this need to protect him and his innocence as a queer person who had gone through a similar journey growing up. It's what I want for many LGBTQIA+ young people.

Elizabeth Acevedo had previously said that she wrote this book for her students, for them to see themselves and to know that they were seen and being rooted for; which is something I commend because not only is this something she does with this book itself, but with her character of Ms. Galiano. English teachers are very important, and I am not saying this as a queer creative and writer who was shown the most support in High School by an English teacher, but—actually, no, I am saying thus because of exactly that. Ms. Galiano offers support to Xiomara but does not impose it; she allows her to know that she has potential and should explore what it would do for her to be around a community of people with the same potential. Through her poetry club, she provides those kids with the space to be seen, to exist and express themselves and congregate with their kind—which is the opposite of what Xiomara's mother does with religion and the Catholic confirmation classes. There's so much to explore in terms of how Acevedo provided context for so many young people's story, but I'd rather link you to a review I feel does that with such clarity, empathy and heart, while I become your Ms. Galiano and direct you to other books that will do you a great service if The Poet X moved you some type of way. Trust me, besties, you will not be disappointed.

These books not only serve to highlight and amplify BIPOC authors and own voices narratives—they delve into important territories of race, gender, sexuality and identity. They also address hate crimes like homo/transphobia, racism and the struggles young people go through in their lives... So read these at your own discretion, with trigger warnings in mind, and practice self-care when you can and where necessary.

Collective Amnesia, by Koleka Putuma

It takes strength to grieve, to fall apart, leaking things, people who will never return to you.

We kick off this list with one of my most prized possessions—an imperative exploration of Black womanhood, of gender and sexuality, and identity as a whole. Koleka Putuma's Collective Amnesia is a collection of poetry I am perpetually awed by. With chapter titled Inherited Memory, Buried Memory and Post Memory, the book uses grief and memory to bring to the spotlight many things that Black queer South Africans go through, especially women, in a kind of critical exploration of pains, joys, loves and hurts that is intersectional it encompasses many of our lived experiences. It is a manifesto on Blackness and history, of the present and the future that continue to elude us when the skeletons of the past invite themselves to dinner tables and are still ignored.

It also exists as a chance for healing when people dare to put in the work that unmasks this collective amnesia and undress their flaws so as to address them and reconcile our trauma—this process is somewhat cathartic, but I appreciate how Putuma's work in general is rooted in healing and visibility. It is reminiscent of so many feminist thinkers' doctrines, highlighting the experiences of people in rural and urban areas likes, in academia, religion and politics with a language that makes people feel seen and understood.

Collective Amnesia is an important body of work. It is also available as an audio experience on all music streaming sites. Get on it!!!

Dear Martin, by Nic Stone

You ever consider that maybe you're not supposed to 'fit'? People who make history rarely do.

In 2012, a Black 17-year-old high school student Jordan Davis and his friends stopped at a gas station in Florida. During an altercation with a 45-year-old white man complaining about the loudness of music the group was playing, the man fired ten bullets at the group, killing Jordan Davis in the process.

This tragic killing of unarmed Black youth isn't something new, especially at the hands of white people; there have and continue to be many cases—this, however, is the story, like many others, that prompted writers like Nic Stone to write, to advocate and challenge the inherent scourge of racism in America. Written as a reaction to Davis' murder in 2017, Dear Martin follows Justyce McAllister, a young Black privileged high schooler who has lived most of his life the exemplary youngster—an elite school, a prominent debate club position and destined for the Ivy League. It is during one incident with police brutality that leads Justyce to question his perception of everything around him and racism as a whole. Still reeling from this, he starts writing letters to Martin Luther King Jr., investigating the lengths that racism and prejudice in America go to to cripple Black youtg, the future of the society; which one question in mind: What would MLK do?

This book has been read quite a lot on BIPOC Bookstagram and I'm glad for it because this is an important book, with a message I believe in. Nic Stone uses a protagonist that's quite empathetic and innocent to challenge a system that ignores innocence and potential in young Black people, but rather seeks to diminish that goodness. She takes a narrative that we have seen before and adds her own value and power that's so enthralling it sets the book apart from the rest. Lovers of The Hate U Give will enjoy this as it tackles themes of racism and racial/ethnic profiling quite delicately and expertly, you'd be amazed to discover that it is Stone's debut novel.

Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black people love their children with a kind of obsession. You are all we have, and yet come to us endangered.

A point: we love Ta-Nehisi Coates in this house. And while I have not had the opportunity to read this one book, it does not take away its importance in the conversation this list intends to spark. I have read some good things about it and it holds a number in the many books by Black authors I hope to read before I die.

Inspired by James Baldwin's book, The Fire Next Time; Coates decided to write his own version of what life was like growing up as a youngster in the streets of Baltimore littered with violence, profiling and other threats that lurk on Black youngsters—a reality he narrowly escaped.

In the same manner as Baldwin's book, Coates' Between the World and Me is written in the form of a letter to his 15-year-old son who is at the point in his life when, like young Justyce in Stone's debut, is coming to terms with his reality as a young Black person and the blatant racial injustice that follows everyone whose skin isn't white. It explores a plethora of themes such as racism, race and the systemic nature of oppression, fear and a search for identity. I believe that this book is a need for many young people, especially Fathers and sons, because it opens up the much-needed space to have conversations most people have a hard time having with their children when they grow up; a chat that I understand to be crucial as a kind of rite-of-passage for Black manhood in America-that your body exists as target practice for white corruption, for police brutality. Coates writes, "I write to you in your 15th year. And know now if you did not before, that the police departments of your country have been endowed with the authority to destroy your body..." It envokes a different conversation, as one critic highlights, than the one Baldwin has with his nephew, or one that Moss' mother has with the protagonist in Anger is a Gift; but an important conversation nonetheless. Unlike the two books, Coates pledges his son to understand his place in this flawed system while Baldwin and Oshiro advice us that at the core of understanding this system must exist a hunger to change it, to shake it, and a strike to dismantle it. Both doctrines can co-exist and that is why all these books are part of this list. You, bestie, are the reader and it is your prerogative to unpack what it means to you and how you act and react to it.

Autopsy, by Donte Collins

& what is an orgy, if not the opposite of a funeral, if not an attempt to press your pulse to as many strangers as possible: to compare how alive you still are.

Many years ago while stalking Yrsa Daley-Ward's Facebook, I stumbled upon Donte Collins. I did not sleep that night. I fell deep into a Button Poetry rabbit-hole that introduced me to amazing written and spoke word artists like Rudy Francesco, Rachel Wiley. Andrea Gibson and Sabrina Benaim, among many others.

Collins' debut poetry collection, Autopsy, is a kind of book that words fail me to describe. Language could never truly encapsulate how this work of art impacted my life, how it moved me and opened me up from the inside out. It slapped me sober, forced me to introspect and retrospect. When I first read this I was going through one thing or another; because the past few years (which were previously labeled Varsity Years, and now are better terms Pre-Pandemic Years) were not the kindest for me in terms of my emotional and mental health; so I was always dealing with something. I saw myself in Collins' words and world, and the story they told-it was like being stuck between the past and the present, a writer for the future who while purging themself of their lived experiences and past trauma gave me words that affirmed deeply rooted anxieties and resentments I'd harboured against my late mother. Like Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Autopsy reads as an almost confessional, a love letter to the author's mother-a telling of the story she could not tell herself. Or more poignantly, a conversation the author could not really have with her while she was alive due to the respect(ability?) that exists between the different roles the two held. It reminded me that as a generation equipped with the power of language and an understanding of the past, we are custodians of their legacies. If we wanted, we could immortalise them.

From important factors and themes like grief, sexuality, race , to adoption and the intersections of class, this collection of poetry feels almost like Donte Collins sits you down and performs an autopsy on your deepest triggers and leaves in your place a completely different person.

How We Fight for Our Lives, by Saeed Jones

Being black can get you killed. Being gay can get you killed. Being a black gay boy is a death wish. And one day, if you're lucky, your life and death will be some artist's new 'project'.

Like Donte Collins, Danez Smith and other Black queer poets who use their writing to put a huge middle finger to the cisheteronormative autobots (?) and propaganda agents that seek to erase and unmake us, Saaed Jones penned down a very haunting and very - what's this word? - overwhelming - No? - memoir. Overwhelming is a good enough word, but I was looking for something along the lines of exposing, undressing; one of those words that depict ones soul being made bare for all to see.

A reviewer on Goodreads said, "Blending poetry and prose, [Saeed] Jones has developed a style that is equal parts sensual, beautiful, and powerful-a voice that surely turns a river, a blues, and a night scape set ablaze. [His memoir] is a one-of-a-kind memoir and a book that cements Saeed as an essential writer of our time." And one cannot help but agree wholeheartedly.

One of the biggest factors I looked at when curating this list, although these books have some things that are different and render them unique in their own rights in how they dive and detail experiences of/on identity and Blackness; they show a love and nod to mothers. Jones' coming-of-age story of a young, Black gay man fighting to assert his position and carve a place for himself in many areas of his life-as bildungsroman-y as a memoir can get, this book uses a poetic and deliberate language to champion for authentic own voices narratives, critiquing the world's perception of race, queerness, power and how these intersect to mould our realities. Jones uses his words, his story and his experiences to fight, to bring people up and as a weapon of sort to prove that we hold the power in the most not-so-secret secret and overlooked places-in ourselves. That is how we fight for ourselves. For our lives.

Anger Is a Gift, by Mark Oshiro

It's like they can't avoid it, said Kaisha. We were literally there to protest against them using deadly force, so they responded with... deadly force. Incredible.

Mark Oshiro's debut novel following the story of how teenager Morris 'Moss' Jefferies and his friends find themselves thrust deep into a fight for their lives and livelihood as they know it when they feel unprotected in the one place they are sent to be safe-at school.

I have never cried so much tears of anguish from reading a book. It was excruciating. I was triggered, angered, and pressed and disgusted. I was invested. I saw myself there with those kids, feeling their frustration and pain, their trauma and the injustice they had to suffer at the hands of whiteness when all they sought was to be seen and heard.

Anger Is a Gift is more than just a book about race and racism, and police brutality, or teenagers taking back their power and using their agency and social currency to shape change and dismantle a system—it is the fact that it places a queer person of colour at the centre of this. Oshiro packages so many beautyful stories in this one fight for change; with many usually marginalised identities given a voice and agency to have their stories told and struggles documented. It is nuanced in how the author provides a balance of a tale of young love set in a juxtaposing nature of hate and prejudice; with immigration and the hardships undocumented go through. I was so vexed at first, lacking the emotional intelligence, during a conversation I had with a friend about how the book was so painful it bordered on trauma porn. It was after this chat that I understood something—the book is political and personal. The personal and the political become so entwined, you actually realise that they are one and the same thing for so many of us. And that is something uncomfortable to have to come to terms with.

Please don't feel sorry for him. He doesn't want your pity, he wants your anger.

There is just so much to say about this book, and I could go on forever because I loved it so much and believe that you will, too, bestie. I'll link my Goodreads review here because I wrote the Hell out of it—it was during the oh-so-caffeinated time when I was young and dedicated (read: a passionately emotional writer), so I hope you appreciate that.

We Are Not Broken, by George M. Johnson

It's a blessing in the water, Nannyism. Some people walk into water and only get wet, some people walk into water and come out blessed.

George M. Johnson introduces the reader to their maternal grandmother, who “didn’t take no shit,” and the New Jersey childhood and adolescence that they, their brother, and their cousins spent under her care.

Beginning each anecdotal chapter with a “Nannyism”—bits of the matriarch’s wisdom, including “a lie ain’t a side of the story. It’s a lie”—Johnson examines their youth through appreciative and critical lenses. The narrative spans their relationship with their brother and cousins, early experiences with racial discrimination, coming to terms with their queerness, and the death of their grandmother. Interweaved are letters from the cousins to Nanny, detailing her dedication to making sure they had each other as well as the tools to navigate “living in a society that sees you as disposable.” An intensely emotional, stunning read, Johnson’s memoir memorializes the legacy of their grandmother—and all of the Black grandmothers who have built the foundations necessary to ensure that their families would not only survive but flourish.

Having read and gushed at Johnson's debut, it is nothing worth saying that I cannot wait to get this one. All Boys Aren't Blue made me feel seen and represented as a Black nonbinary person, especially as young as I am and still searching for stories of people who look and emote like me. It was providence. I recommend the book to everyone I meet, and you, my dearest bestie, aren't immune. Get the damn books.

The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin

I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

I am going to keep this short because James Baldwin is a literary genius whose work has been the basis of many studies, read and written about by so many people. I have LITERALLY nothing I can say that hasn't already been said. His work speaks for itself, and I feel inadequate even trying to speak on this giant's work.

Written in the form of two lengthy and personal letters, delving on themes such as race, religion and the pursuit for the 'American Dream', Baldwin's The Fire Next Time can be read as a sermon and a confessional—but most importantly, at its depth, is an outcry, a plea, for the abolishment of the racial prejudice in the America of that time. It is only disconcerting and ironic that despite so much work put in by the author and other activists of that era; that this depth and introspection and deliberate-ness of Baldwin's work and position in confronting corruption and racism, this book is still cited today as a text in which marginalised people find themselves and draw strength and power to voice their dissatisfaction with today's corruption. It is the longevity of this scourge that immortalises the spirits of James Baldwin, of Nina Simone, Malcolm X and many others who dared cry power; proving the art and literature relevant to the current climate.

The Fire Next Time is important and relevant, and is one in many of James Baldwin's writings that people should immerse themselves with at one point in their life or another as a Black person in such environments, a queer person in such environments.

However you look at this list; how our lives as queer, as Black, as man, as woman, and as young and old, intersect within these environments is the most common of threads.

Black Girl, Call Home, by Jasmine Mans

When a transwoman is murdered no one cares, because we assume God doesn't either.

Morgan Jenkins wrote that ‘Black Girl, Call Home’ is a haven for all the Black daughters out there hoping to make sense of the power and powerlessness in their bodies, the connection to others’ bodies, and the moments of everyday life that comprise so much of our identities.

I believe that that one paragraph [by Jenkins] alone sums up my own feelings towards reading this book. It took me all of two days to get through it, and only two because I did not want to get to the last poem. I also hold the belief that reading poetry is a journey; you cannot simply read it once and be done. There are so many poems in this collection that stayed with me, some walk with me as I experience the world and others haunt me with the realisation of just how many of our experiences as Black queer people are the same.

Told in a language so accessible and relevant, Mans weaves in one collection a story that I believe every young Black person should read. It reads like a meditation on many elements that play a crucial part in one’s experience and how such weaves our identity - feminism, queerness and queer love, police brutality, religion and belief, race, wo/manhood and familial relations. So, I would suggest going into this book, as important and beautyful as it is, with this trigger warnings in tow.

Like Collective Amnesia, this collection of poems is centered around themes of Black womanhood and the relationships we have with our mothers—mothers and daughters, and sons. Throughout the reading of these poems, there is one thing that lingered which I appreciated—there is a kind of honesty that feels like an undressing of one who has gone through the things that the poet writes about. It is like a confrontation. It is in the way that Mans writes about the relationships that we as queer and Black people have with the world that I draw the parallels between not just The Poet X, but the list in its entirety—our Mothers' pains, fears, expectations and sacrifices for us to exist and be whole, and how we learn and unlearn some things to get there.

And since you already know I have a hard beating love for you, my besties; there's an additional mention you ought to certainly check out. I had a rollercoaster of emotions while reading it and I feel you will, too. It is poetic and brilliant, and very important.

Ocean Vuong's On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is that book. I found the book utterly autobiographical, something a reviewer on Bookstagram termed 'autofiction' because the experiences Little Dog, the narrator, writes about draw in many ways on elements from Vuong's own life. If you happened to read the author's poetry collection, it becomes even easier to draw from the parallels of what's real and fictional, and that which exists in between. It is a novel about race and being part of a legacy that's wrenched in war, in blood and alienation and displacement-it is through this way of writing, of speaking, that is both poetic and scattered, fragmented and somewhat stream-of-consciousness-y that we are invited into this displacement because while there are many parts that beckon tears in one, dwelling in the emotions is short-lived with the urgency in which the narrator provides each short and fast-paced tale; moving from one moment in time to another.

If anything these books are triggering, but they are also part of a long list of books that work to correct a wrong that's been shown in most contemporary novels-the lack of diversity in not just stories about people who look like us, but those which delve into our pains, our fights for recognition and how we use our agency to triumph over that which comes to extinguish us. Like Moss' mother says in Anger Is a Gift, we need not simply stew in our anger and dissatisfaction. We have been gifted this anger to use it to advocate for ourselves. That's why these books exist and why they are important. They are manifestos for what we have been through, what we continue to go through and how we can prevent the past from repeating itself-from affecting the generation that comes after ours. How we learn.

And who said that reading to be entertained cannot exist in accordance with being educated, especially in a manner that's critical and thought-provoking? Readers and non-readers alike, both young and old, would appreciate the work that these authors and thinkers and activists have put into these bodies of work. I hope that you'll share this list with your loved ones as I have shared them with you, besties.

Because, as you already know, I love you. And this is just one of many ways that I show my love to those who hold it. That would be you, my dearest reader.

—Nkeshyy 💋

P.S. How about a little trivia?

Did you know that The Poet X was actually banned at some point? It was said to be filled with profanity, explicit sex and promoted anti-Christianity. It is also not the only book on this list that was banned. Care to guess which other ones? Let me know in the comments section below.