(V.)

In 1974, when Ntozake Shange first released the cannon of Black girl magic known as For colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf, her opening stanza was a call to all of us.

“somebody / anybody

sing a black girl's song

bring her out

to know herself …”

This book is answer to that call. Anastacia-Reneé’s words frame so many questions: what is sacred, what is beauty, what is tragedy, what rites of passage have we endured to be initiated into the complexities of our...