Overview

Renisha McBride. Tamir Rice. Jordan Davis. Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Freddie Gray. Aiyana Stanley-Jones. At a certain point, BIPOC families must have ""the Conversation,"" a discussion and set of instructions for surviving a world of policing, presumed guilt, and the racial inequities that threaten our very lives. It's labeled ""the Conversation,"" but this discussion is never an intimate moment, never a one-time event. Instead it's a constant choir of dissent and disembodied voices whispering and wailing night and day. Through a mix of lyric, found text, and hybridity, How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children highlights some of these voices: adults and children, murderers and victims, bookshelves and wanted posters, carnival barkers and political pundits. Inspired by Audre Lorde's ""Power"" How to Kill Yourself Instead of Your Children calls upon the past and present in an attempt to find a language higher than the circular rhetoric that falls in and out of mass media, to hold a conversation that is constant even in silence, to escape the cycle of violence and Black death.

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9781949540208

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Reviews

""These poems are dying to stay tender in the plumage of rage. These poems are cry-laughing to keep from killing somebody. These poems are the knife's edge of nightmare scoring the fertile threshold of song. They unflinchingly ask and answer: What use is a poem on this American killing floor and its cooling board of rhetoric?"" -Yolanda Wisher, author of Monk Eats an Afro, 3rd Poet Laureate of Philadelphia Praise for Previous Work ""Quincy Scott Jones' poems are wise and sinewy. He has a way of observing what is right in front of him as well as what used to be there, and what might be coming. He translates the voices and journeys of people that inhabit the charged physical and emotional landscapes he's travelled, bearing witness to the gamut of these experiences."" -Kamilah Aisha Moon, author of Starshine & Clay ""Quincy Scott Jones has the courage to take on the most difficult and vital subjects with stunning integrity and imagination. He's the kind of writer our culture needs desperately."" -D. Nurkse, author of Love in the Last Days

These poems are dying to stay tender in the plumage of rage. These poems are cry-laughing to keep from killing somebody. These poems are the knife's edge of nightmare scoring the fertile threshold of song. They unflinchingly ask and answer: What use is a poem on this American killing floor and its cooling board of rhetoric? -Yolanda Wisher, author of Monk Eats an Afro, 3rd Poet Laureate of Philadelphia Praise for Previous Work Quincy Scott Jones' poems are wise and sinewy. He has a way of observing what is right in front of him as well as what used to be there, and what might be coming. He translates the voices and journeys of people that inhabit the charged physical and emotional landscapes he's travelled, bearing witness to the gamut of these experiences. -Kamilah Aisha Moon, author of Starshine & Clay Quincy Scott Jones has the courage to take on the most difficult and vital subjects with stunning integrity and imagination. He's the kind of writer our culture needs desperately. -D. Nurkse, author of Love in the Last Days

Author Information

Quincy Scott Jones is the author of The T-Bone Series (Whirlwind Press). His work has appeared in the African American Review, the North American Review, the Bellingham Review, and Love Jawns: A Mixtape. He is a Cave Canem fellow and a VONA Alum. With Nina Sharma he co-curates Blackshop, a column that thinks about allyship between BIPOC artist. He teaches in the NYC area and is working on his first graphic narrative.

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