When I was a little girl, my grandmother used to say: ‘Shame the devil, tell the truth.’
My grandmother, with her Mississippian idioms, has long passed, so she never got to witness this particular iteration of American reckoning. As her granddaughter, living in the age of misinformation, ChatGPT, and AI replicas where truthtellers who dare to point out what the emperor isn’t wearing face retaliation or worse in this age of American falsehoods.
For me, there is a particular sense of respite that comes from listening to the words of brave poets who tell it like it is.
On August 24, Minnesota poet Dralandra Larkins held a book launch for her debut collection “Before I Lie” at the American School of Storytelling in Minneapolis. I attended the launch with friends from across the local poetry community.
I watched Larkins speak her truth on the small stage beneath a string of twinkle lights. She was fierce in front of the mic, self-assured while reciting the poems from the pages of her book.
“Before I Lie” is a hybrid collection of autobiographical poetry, prose, illustrations and photographs that unravel the coming of age story of the author, a young Black woman from Minneapolis.
In the collection, Larkins puts on trial the structural and intra-community injustices that tried to break her and the women in her family. The confessional style of spoken word poetry zeros in on a range of soft and overt violences that the poet aims to resist and heal through the act of truthtelling and self-discovery.
“I will tell my story because I am speaking for Black girls/ who never had the mic… These poems aren’t just art/ they’re evidence…” Larkins writes in her opening poem, “The Trial.” She closes the poem with a core question driving the book as a whole:
“Who was I before I lied to myself?” Larkins writes.
This self-interrogation parallels the overarching interrogation of societal structures getting in the way of Black girlhood. The motif is threaded vividly throughout the book. Often, these parallels are metaphorically realized by juxtaposing contrasting images to articulate a kind of tension between these parallel truths.
In her poems “Sensitive Gangsta with a Hard Spine” and “Ode to the Hood — Where I’m From” Larkins shines a light on these parallels in true spoken word fashion. The words are carried by rhythm and momentum, conveying a sense of urgency that propels the words beyond the page.
At her book launch, Larkins recited “Ode to the Hood — Where I’m From” from memory, embodying the poem fully, South Minneapolis’ Chicago and Lake Street, George Floyd Square, the great migration and 90’s R&B coming to life in her recitation of the poem.
Beyond these parallels, there’s also a celebratory reclamation of self that drives the work. That reclamation is equal parts spiritual and rootwork. It is the language of selfhood that finds grounding in Black traditions and self-expression. This sense of self is rooted in the materiality of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). The language itself becomes a sanctuary in Larkins’ self-titled poem “Dralandra,” where she writes:
“A lemon wedge in sweet tea./ I’m talkin’ cookout–/ good ole deep-fried Ebonics./ Gums with greens-soaked grammar./ Watermelon-slang/ hangin’ out your mouth,/ code-switchin/ couldn’t scrub my speech clean/ from the Dirty South’”
In the poem “To Hear in Another Key; The First Verse of Self-Love,” the theme of language as a place of sanctuary shows up again, but this time as a celebration of Larkins’ second language, American Sign Language ( ASL). Larkins, who is hard of hearing and uses hearing aids, writes a touching tribute to the Minneapolis Public Schools teacher who first taught her ASL:
“To be a Black woman in America is hard. But it’s always been hard.”
“She didn’t just tell me to embrace my difference–/ she taught me where it came from./ Taught me to know my roots,/ to honor the giants/ who walked before me–/ like Sojourner Truth… she taught me: sound isn’t the only language,/ and silence is its own kind of cadene — a space to hear the loudest unspoken.” The poem concludes with an ASL illustration of a highly melanated hand making the sign for “love.”
For me, there is a very special resonance that occurs within Larkins’ recognition of the collective legacies of Black women who found solace in truthtelling. Sojourner Truth for example, the famed abolitionist, women’s rights activist, and formerly enslaved Black woman with disabilities, who was fearless in her commitment to truth; she was the first Black woman in American history to take a white man to trial and win.
I feel like the spirit of Sojourner Truth chimes in to affirm Larkins’ own journey throughout this book. Larkins’ journey to assert her own womanhood is a ‘’boomerang-sankofa-response’ to Truth’s original call: “Ain’t I A Woman?”
To be a Black woman in America is hard. But it’s always been hard. Where there is pain, heartbreak, trauma, microaggressions, and violence peppered throughout Larkins’ collection, there is also joy. There is holiness. Resilience. A roaring celebration of Black womanhood. An elevation of Black women from hoods that rarely find acclaim on the pages of poetic verse.
As Larkins comes into her own sense of self, she heals herself and by extension, the ancestors and any Black girl or woman that sees herself reflected in the courageous truths laid bare throughout the pages of “Before I Lie.” Larkins offers a verdict to the cosmos regarding the stories of Black women relegated to the margins, Black women who are often told “we too loud mouthed” for the page. In her poem “The Verdict,” Larkins writes: “Put silence/ on trial.”
[The stylistic backslashes throughout this review reflect line breaks commonly used by poets in a non-poetry format.]
Purchase a copy of “Before I Lie” by visiting Dralandra Larkins’ website: https://dralandrawrites.com/before-i-lie.
Sagirah Shahid is an award-winning poet and was a finalist for the city of Minneapolis’ position of poet laureate. You can find more about Shahid’s writing at https://sagirahshahid.com.