Magical Negro

February 1, 2019
As in her last book of poetry, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyonc� (2017), Parker again deconstructs a pantheon of popular Black icons, this time through a disconnected cycle of Magical Negro poems. While sending up celebrities in Diana Ross Finishing a Rib in Alabama and Michael Jackson in Blackface on a Date with Tatum O'Neal, Parker also draws a somber lineage through ostensibly superficial similarities: The gap in James Baldwin's teeth speaks to the gap in Malcolm X's teeth. The result is a profound meditation on the history and future of Black liberation. From a schoolchild's concerns ( How can I concentrate / on photosynthesis when / there is a thing called Africa ) to the problematic implications of the increasingly popular invocation, now more than ever, which, when uttered by the most politically liberal but socially comfortable of Whites, translates into, I straight up did not believe you before. A searing indictment, an irreverent lampoon, and a desperately urgent work of poetry, to be read alongside the work of Eve L. Ewing, Tiana Clark, and Nicole Sealey.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)