Overview

Blood at the Root by Latorial Faison is a searing, lyrical collection of poetry that confronts the enduring trauma and legacy of Black life in America. With unflinching honesty and poetic force, Faison crafts an elegy, an anthem, a call to resistance-speaking directly to the historical and ongoing violence, erasure, and resilience that define the African American experience. Spanning themes of racial injustice, generational pain, ancestral reverence, and the sacredness of Black identity, the collection explores the everyday and the epic-from lynchings and systemic oppression to the quiet, powerful moments of Black motherhood, survival, and joy. Faison invokes the spirits of icons and martyrs, from Nat Turner to Trayvon Martin, infusing her verse with historical gravitas and spiritual urgency. Divided into powerfully titled pieces such as ""When Black Lives Mattered"" and ""A Eulogy for America's Black Boy,"" Blood at the Root is both a literary reckoning and a poetic archive. Faison's voice, bold and evocative, reclaims the narratives of those too often silenced and demands a reckoning from America's conscience. This collection is not just a book of poems-it is a ritual, a resistance, and a testament to the enduring strength and beauty of Black life, written with the prophetic clarity of a poet who bears witness and speaks truth to power.

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Latorial Faison is an African American poet, author, professor, veteran military spouse, and mother. A native of rural Southampton County, Virginia, Faison earned a BA in English with a minor in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, the MA in English at Virginia Tech, and a doctoral degree in Education at Virginia State University where she currently serves as an Assistant Professor of English and Chair of the Department of Languages and Literature. Faison's writing boldly explores Black Southern traditions, race, and African American culture and identity. Her poetry collection, Nursery Rhymes in Black, won the 2023 Permafrost Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Alaska Press, an imprint of the University Press of Colorado. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a recipient of fellowships from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), Virginia Humanities, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center. Her poetry and prose have appeared in acclaimed literary publications, such as Callaloo, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, Prairie Schooner, West Trestle Review, Artemis Journal, RHINO, Penumbra, Aunt Chloe, About Place Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Stonecoast Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Virginia's Best Emerging Poets. Faison is the author of numerous poetry collections including Mother to Son, LOVE POEMS, and the Amazon Kindle best-selling trilogy 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History. She is also the author of the historical study The Missed Education of the Negro: An Examination of the Black Segregated Experience in Southampton County, VA 1950-1970, and children's books Kendall's Golf Lesson and 100 Poems You Can Write. She has served on the faculty of various colleges and universities throughout the US and abroad. She holds Life Membership in The Poetry Society of Virginia, College Language Association, and the historic Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.

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