Poetry is a powerful vehicle for storytelling. This is certainly true in Walking Gentry Home, a family history written in verse by 19-year-old Alora Young.
The 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States, Young has crafted a masterful collection of poems that traces her genealogy from her mother and grandmothers in Western Tennessee back to her lost African ancestors. She begins the book with the haunting poem, “Mother, TN, Many Many Generations”:
I have many mothers
They are mostly black
They are mostly broken
They have existed here for centuries
They are dying with the towns that birthed them
Each of Young’s poems is also an ode to Black girlhood and how the struggles faced by her foremothers carries over into her own experience becoming a woman.
I adored this heartbreaking but love-filled book, especially as a woman and a mother myself. I highly recommend it for all readers but particularly those that share these life experiences.
You can find Walking Gentry Home in Cole Library’s Browsing Room Nonfiction section under the call number 811.6 Y8407wa 2022.