How She Read

Drawing from grade-school vocabulary spellers, literature, history, art, media and pop culture, Chantal Gibson highlights the depth and duration of the imperialist ideas embedded in everyday things, from storybooks to coloured pencils, from paintings to postage stamps.

A mediation on motherhood and daughterhood, belonging, loss and recovery, the collection weaves the voices of Black women, past and present. As Gibson dismantles the grammar of her Queen Elizabeth English, sister scholars talk back, whisper, suck teeth, curse and carry on from canonized texts, photographs and art gallery walls, reinterpreting their image, re-reading their bodies and claiming their space in a white, hegemonic landscape. Supported by the voices of Black women writers, the poems unloose the racist misogyny, myths, tropes and stereotypes women of colour continue to navigate every day.

How She Read illustrates a writer's journey from passive receiver of racist ideology to active cultural critic in the process of decolonizing her mind.

Pre-owned edition

Paperback 104 pages

Publisher: Caitlin Press

Published: January 29, 2019

Physical Dimensions: 5.9" x 8.9"

Shipping Weight: 0.35 lbs.