Mahogany - by Vanessa Jimenez Gabb (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A searing collection of poetry on diaspora, motherhood, and postcolonial legacies.

Taking its name from the national tree of Belize and the country's biggest export during its colonial period, Mahogany traces the poet's fraught journey into self-actualization in the shadow of capitalism. The poems travel from the galleries of pre-war Kyiv, where she questions her role as her artist partner's muse, back in time to engage with the socioeconomic history of Belize. Through the language of her father's doctoral dissertation on Belize's postcolonial economic condition, written during Jimenez Gabb's childhood, the poet begins to explore the mother wound as she struggles to mother her own child.

Review Quotes

"Powerful, elegant, lush, disorienting, philosophical, honest and cutting, full of life, clarity, energy, vulnerability and beauty."--Daniel Borzutzky, in praise of Basic Needs

"I trust this wise, fearless poet's sense of beauty and justice--I trust her words to take us deep into the future. We need her voice resounding there; we need her poetry witnessing and singing here, now."--Brenda Shaughnessy, in praise of Images for Radical Politics

About the Author

Vanessa Jimenez Gabb is the author of the poetry collections Mahogany (2027), Basic Needs (2021) and Images for Radical Politics (2016), and is the founder of the Radical Beauty Series, a video series that shares the beauty tutorials, stories and critiques of working poets, writers and artists. She has an MA in English from St. John's University and an MFA in Poetry from Brooklyn College, where she was the recipient of the 2010 Himan Brown Award. In 2012 she founded the literary project Five Quarterly. Of Belizean and Colombian descent, she is from and lives in New York City.