Uses of My Body

Poetry. In the spirit of Audre Lorde's essay collection Sister Outsider, the charged and direct language of USES OF MY BODY emphasizes black women's experience of erasure, sexual and racial violence, as well as pleasure and healing. The poems are marked by the refusal to code switch and speak to repeated experiences of being touched and looked at as a black woman navigating desire and intimate relationships. The book is an unapologetic and humorous exploration of sex, magic, and dancing, as a fitness instructor/gym junky, poet, and academic living in Kansas.