Black Peculiar by Khadijah Queen


Black Peculiar
Title : Black Peculiar
Author :
Rating :
ISBN : 1934819204
ISBN-10 : 9781934819203
Language : English
Format Type : Paperback
Number of Pages : 64
Publication : First published December 1, 2011

Poetry. African American Studies. BLACK PECULIAR sketches out power dynamics and faulty assumptions in terms of race and history, media and culture, and sex and gender in highly original lines of verse. An extraordinary mixture of wit and profundity, the three long works in the collection weave the personal and the political in both ruthless and tender ways. A fiction, a chorus, a leap into chaos, an unflinching love letter and a fierce indictment—BLACK PECULIAR collages observation and lived experience through a many-voiced "I" as flawed and complex and unusual as the mind of the artist in the world.

Black Peculiar Reviews

  • Meg Tuite

    Inimitable! Fascinating mix of poetry and a wildass play at the end. It's one to read over and over. She is powerfully peculiar! LOVE!

  • Tracy

    I did not want to return Black Peculiar to the library. I am so in awe of the different ways Khadijah Queen approaches language in her work. In the ANIMUS section, the "most to uncover the reality..." ranging titles peel and dig for a core of motivations.

    Examples of the language:
    Mostly to uncover the reality of my soothing brand of sickness
    Mostly to uncover the reality of my inferior fathering

    Queen is examining experience from all angles, using grammar and analogies to speak directly: to the Hijab, Red Light, Scar Tissue, etc.

    This is an incredible choreopoem. Act I starts with THE BROWN VAGINA, THE BLONDE INSTITUTION, THE ONLINE PAYMENTS, AND FONDLED HAIR, AND THE WHITE APPROPRIATION and continues to build the disjointed chorus of voices that must be heard.

  • gracie

    stunning, particularly non-sequitur (a disjointed chorus in three acts)

  • Deborah Poe

    Between a 4 and 5 for the first section. "Non-sequitur (a disjointed chorus in three acts)" is brilliant.

  • Holly M Wendt

    I want a 3.5-star option. I absolutely loved and was transported by so many individual moments, lines, and images in this collection (particularly in "Black Peculiar::Energy Complex," the book's first section), but the opacity of others held me at arm's length from the work. I'm very glad I bought this book, though--it's doing a lot of fresh, interesting things with form, and I'd like to teach from it.

  • T.

    Between a 4 and 5 for the first section. "Non-sequitur (a disjointed chorus in three acts)" is brilliant.

  • Andi

    So rich with image and lush language. I am sure I could read this book a thousand times and find new power in the words.

  • Sara Sams

    It took me awhile to finish Black Peculiar because that first section read, initially, like disparate shards that were difficult for me to collect and understand in context of each other. After giving it some space and re-reading that section, however-- like anyone invested in poetry should-- something changed. The poems began to function more like a line of linguistic philosophical inquiry, and the world Queen had created opened up for me in a really unique way.

    Plus, it was definitely worth persevering: the rest of the book is vast and beautiful and incisive.