boy

by Donny Jackson

Overview

boy, the debut poetry collection by Donny Jackson--veteran poet, clinical psychologist, and Emmy Award-winning documentary television producer--is an awakening on an ocean floor of othering, be it color or gender or place, and rise from personae, to unflinching eyewitness, to a devastatingly personal emergence in a cultural tsunami, the swimmer gasping for air.

"Compressed. Reflecting the eye of the documentarian who knows "i am news for not being new." Coded. Asking "if this is innocent how much more erase would guilty be," while channeling the assassinated passions of lives lost to state violence, lives lost to patriarchal violence. Unflinching. Calling us to be courageous and aware and generous enough to "stop and be music with me."
- Peter J. Harris, founder, The Black Man of Happiness Project; author, The Black Man of Happiness: In Pursuit of My 'Unalienable Right, ' winner, 2015 American Book Award

"Say their name. Say their name. Say their name. This is what Donny Jackson's poems do. They say the names of the slain turned headlines and hashtags, but Jackson has immortalized them and their stories, which have become our stories. He places the reader in the cell with Kalief Browder, poolside with Dajerria Becton, and the home of a patrolman's wife. His poems take us from Puerto Rico to Texas, while some poems contain the rhythm of a Hughes poem."
- Luivette Resto, author of Ascension and Unfinished Portrait

"Donny Jackson's boy has a way of ripping out your soul, shredding it, and nurturing it back to form an entirely new existence. His words are Powerful. Gripping. Devastating. Illuminating. Healing. You must experience boy."
- Jim Clemente, author of Call Me God

"In Donny Jackson's boy the reader is given an extraordinary gift. The opportunity to be equally stimulated both emotionally AND intellectually is rare contemporary creative writing. Donny masters it! From start to finish, you'll think deeply and feel even deeper... culminating in a transformative and entirely unique journey. "
- Eboni K. Williams, Co-host, State of the Culture, author of Pretty Powerful: Appearance, Substance, and Success

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781945681424
Publisher:	Silver Star Laboratory LLC
Publication date:	02/13/2020
Pages:	158
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.37(d)

About the Author

Donny Jackson is a writer, performer, producer, and clinical psychologist based in Los Angeles. In addition to his spoken word plays, One Man Shown and salome: ten poems about one thing (Greenway Court Theatre, 2013 and 2019, respectively), Dr. Donny's poems have appeared in La Bloga Online Floricanto's 10 Best Poems of 2015 and -2017, Skin to Skin: a magazine for women of the LGBT community (Lulu.com, 2013), as well as multiple anthologies, including, The Border Crossed Us: An Anthology to End Apartheid (Vagabond Press, 2016; Winner of the 2016 International Latino Book Award for Best Anthology), and Incandescent Mind (Sadie Girl Press, Winter 2017). He is also an NAACP Image Award-winning producer and multiple Emmy Award-winning showrunner of documentary television.

Editorial Reviews

"The late literary icon Toni Morrison expressed that a writer’s work is not to imagine what is there and what is not, but it is the 'becoming of words that is the task of the writer. boy is the 'becoming' of a language that connects solace and hostilities into social groundings of self and community awareness. This collection of poetry assumes the shapes of uninformed justices and is purposefully restricted to the space of intellectual transformation. Donny has given us a genuine preserve for the art form of poetry that empowers people to 'take up more space - be zion like mountain -less move -less shrink -less ignore.'"

- Nikki Skies, Playwright, Poet and author of The Town Dance

“A bright gem. A deep breath. A song in the night. Donny Jackson’s boy gives us new energy for a time such as this.”

- Valarie Kaur, Civil rights activist and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project





"boy is a brilliant collection. The author explores the politics of identity using a motley of stories that create a mosaic of human existence. boy provides a wonderful synopsis of what it means to be marginalized in America, offers the reader an opportunity to further understand how it feels to exist in these spaces and provides a perspective that is simultaneously unique and familiar. The detailed narratives and imagery confluence to make this book an absolute joy to read."

- Rudy Francisco, National Underground Poetry Slam Champion, Individual World Poetry Slam Champion, author of Helium





“Put simply, Donny Jackson is a dangerous writer.”

- Buddy Wakefield, three time world champion spoken word artist, author of A Choir of Honest Killers

From the Publisher

★ 2020-11-30
A debut collection of poetry that stares down racial injustice and demands immediate change.

These 55 poems unearth the emotion beneath the surface of media reportage. In an eponymous work about Kalief Browder, a Black youth who was held in jail for two years without trial and later committed suicide, the poet pinpoints the 16-year-old’s echoing loneliness and sense of uncertainty: “i am in an alone / 23 hours a day / while they are waiting to see / if i am a guilty.” Meanwhile, in the poem “train,” about the 2016 rape trial of Stanford University student Brock Turner, Jackson writes from the perspective of sexual assault survivor Chanel Miller, known during the case as “Emily Doe”: “i cannot yet forgive my thighs for not becoming jaws and / crushing his thrust into powder.” Other poems address police brutality and the murders of trans women. Jackson’s poetry is devastating in its minimalism; for instance, in “mckinney,” he deftly communicates the shocking absurdity of the violent 2015 arrest of Dajerria Becton: “how dare you know to tell that officer / he’s hurting you / for attacking him / with minding your own business.” Similarly, in “jasmine,” a poem about “cowboys” defending their “territory” against the unwanted arrival of Muslim neighbors, he writes: “a gun is a fist for a man with weak hands and dead words.” In poems about victims, such as Kerrice Lewis, a Black lesbian who was shot and burned alive in 2017, Jackson urges readers to repeat the names of Black lives taken unjustly. The poet’s words cut down oppressors with swiftness and vigor, and they’ll remain with readers long after they finish the book.

Powerful, stirring writing.

Kirkus Reviews