Reporting from the Belly of the Night

By Sojourner Ahebee

Poet Sojourner Ahebee's debut poetry chapbook, Reporting from the Belly of the Night, is a meditation on Black femininity & the ways in which black women are uniquely vulnerable to violence in their homes, schools, public/digital spaces, both locally and transnationally across time and borders. These poems are obsessed with empathy for black women, colorism, desire, black mental health, healing practices, and intersectional identities on the margins of history. This chapbook is also a collaboration with visual artist Kamakshi Duvvuru. Almost every poem in the collection is accompanied with one of her brilliant watercolors, magically blurring the space between word & image. The art featured in the chapbook is from a series that was both a means of and an ode to the transformative process of birthing as a creator. Sojourner Ahebee's [poems] are willed with black girl teeth, stunning portraits of stunning selves, and all the rage, rhythm, and holiness you can find in an Azealia Banks song. These poems are rapid with the genius, as these lyrics unfold lush and sturdy from Ahebee's versatile hand. This chapbook is a grand announcement, a declaration starting all the way in the back of a mighty mouth. -- Danez Smith, National Book Award Finalist Sojourner Ahebee is a brilliant emerging poet. Her voice, at once vivid and precise, champions the wisdom of many lineages of black women poets before her. In this debut collection she invokes those ancestors, bone-crafting a rich tapestry of language, feeling, ritual and wonder. Sally to Sojourner, Angel to Azealia, the poet pulls at the edges centering the lavish and the lonely, the magic and the mundane in each one of us. This is a rich debut from a young artist not to miss. -- A-lan Holt, Author of Moonwork (Candor Arts) & THE BOTTOM OF HEAVEN Reporting from the Belly of the Night is a gospel of self-love full of gorgeous pullulating poems. Ahebee wrenches the sting and the sweetness from black womanhood. She evokes historical, cultural, and familial namesakes, sings up the names of daughters and aunties and mamas, makes mountains of them. This is a young woman's poetry with an elder's heart, unflinchingly traversing the oceans between slavery and social media. These are poems we long for and need but don't always see coming. -- Yolanda Wisher, Philadelphia Poet Laureate (2016-17) Ahebee is a fresh voice and this collection shows she is not just emerging as a poetic voice to be reckoned with, she has emerged. -- Alok Vaid-Menon Ahebee dismantles the lie of the invincible black woman. No, Ahebee's black woman is gentle, subtle, always blooming with flower petals and blanketed in soft light . . . These poems are sharp and intelligent, yet they read like a spell. -- Kai Davis

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 172379645X
• ISBN13: 9781723796456
• Release Date: September 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 40 Pages
• Weight: 0.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.1" x 6.0"