My Mother Was a Freedom Fighter

Starred review from May 15, 2017
Monet (The Black Unicorn Sings), winner of the 2007 Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title, explores and celebrates the myriad experiences of black womanhood in this fierce and revolutionary “ode/ to her revolt.” She draws upon rich memories of her Brooklyn childhood in the 1990s, school days passed on Chicago’s South Side, and an inner awakening in Palestine. Monet strikingly illustrates the passage from girlhood to womanhood, recording the tumultuous shifts between despair and joy that can occur along the way. Womanhood becomes both “the way we wound and heal.” The girls who develop into women in these poems exude strength and self-assurance, unafraid of the conflicting demands of a world that too often devalues them. Monet seems to suggest that women become fighters and warriors in response to the violence of racism and patriarchy. In the opening poem, Monet describes a young girl’s budding selfhood: “a deep remembering of what was, she survives all.” That self connects to the women who have come before and will come after: “my mother does not know/ we are sisters.” Monet also writes of poverty, violence, the bonds of solidarity, and much more. In stunning and evocative language, Monet reveals the many ways that “we exist between/ a self for self and a self for others.”