Description
“In doaks’ poems the unbroken thread of time, particularly as lived by black women in the U.S., is radiant in the figure of Michelle Obama, here more companion than canon, more sister than source text. The poems, whether traditional or exploratory, show us how many things form can do-in poems, in cookie recipes, in food planted in a garden, in art on White House walls— and how herstory, too-often hidden, speaks through all of them. These poems are a joy.” —AILISH HOPPER, author of Dark-Sky Society and Bird in the Head
“celeste doaks has captured the complex and intriguing cultural relevance of Michelle Obama in American Herstory. doaks courageously explores Obama’s simultaneously disruptive and captivating presence as America’s first (acknowledged) Black First Lady. Her poems invite the reader to view the Black female body —not only Obama, herself – through the lenses of all of the girls and women like her whose bodies have been read, re-read, and misread in the American imaginary. American Herstory starts its revelatory journey in Obama’s garden, moves through commentary about Obama’s body in the press, to the walls of the White House, and back again to the Obama as a cultural referent of new possibilities. doaks boldly eviscerates any notion that Obama should have found a way to fit prim expectations to which her predecessors in the White House have conformed. This is not just slim volume focused on a single moment in American culture. Instead, it is a celebration of the black female body from head to booty to the fierceness that has enabled the survival of the stories of Black women who came before Obama and those who will surely succeed her.” —DR. SHEILA SMITH McKOY, Provost, VP of Academic Affairs and African American Studies Professor, Holy Names University
“doaks’ ekphrastic poetry brings to life important works by contemporary visual artists of African descent vis-a-vis one of the most iconic figures of our time: Michelle Obama. Her writing not only helps readers envision the artworks described as if it were physically present but to also see the works anew in light of the Obamas’ departure from the White House. In so doing, doaks brilliantly enacts the possibilities of the verbal and the limitations of the visual at a time when museum collections remain overwhelmingly white yet artists of African descent are more popular —indeed more visible – than ever. doaks’ collection of poems meets this phenomena with a mix of nostalgia and insurgency, inciting readers to question the ways power and privilege operate and persist in our public institutions, from museums to the White House and beyond.” —DR. TIFFANY BARBER, Professor of Africana Studies, University of Delaware
celeste doaks
celeste doaks is the author of Cornrows and Cornfields (2015) and editor of the poetry anthology Not Without Our Laughter (2017). Since the initial publication of American Herstory in 2019, poems from the collection have been featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Brooklyn Museum. She’s been a university professor for over a decade, and is also a 2022 Yaddo fellow. Her work has appeared in multiple US and UK online and print publications including Ms., The Millions, Huffington Post, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Hopkins Review, and many others. Currently, she lives in Baltimore with her husband and too many house plants; and she teaches poetry in the Fairfield University and Hood College low-residency programs.
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