Blood at the Root by Latorial Faison

Latorial Faison is an American poet, author, professor, veteran military spouse, and mother of three.  A native of rural Southampton County, Virginia, Faison earned a BA in English with a minor in Religious Studies at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, the MA in English atVirginia Tech, and a doctoral degree in Education at Virginia State University where she currently serves as an Assistant Professor of English and Chair of the Department of Languages and Literature. Faison’s writing boldly explores Black Southern traditions, race, and African American culture and identity. Her poetry collection, Nursery Rhymes in Black, won the 2023 Permafrost Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Alaska Press, an imprint of the University Press of Colorado. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a recipient of fellowships from the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP), Virginia Humanities, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center. Her poetry and prose have appeared in acclaimed literary publications, such as Callaloo, Obsidian: Literature and Art in the African Diaspora, Prairie Schooner, West Trestle Review,Artemis Journal, RHINO, Penumbra, Aunt Chloe, About Place Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Stonecoast Review, Solstice Literary Magazine, and Virginia’s Best Emerging Poets. Her work has been featured in notable volumes such as Three Minus One and the NAACP Image Award-winning Keeping the Faith. Faison is the author of numerous poetry collections including Mother to Son, LOVE POEMS, and the Amazon Kindle best-selling trilogy 28 Days of Poetry Celebrating Black History. She is also the author of the historical study The Missed Education of the Negro: An Examination of the Black Segregated Experience in Southampton County, VA 1950-1970, and children’s books Kendall’s Golf Lesson and 100 Poems You Can Write. Faison has received multiple honors, including the Tom Howard Poetry Prize, and has ranked as finalist for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, Louise Bogan Poetry Award, North Street Book Prize, and others. She has served on the faculty of various colleges and universities throughout the US and abroad. She holds Life Membership in The Poetry Society of Virginia, College Language Association, and the historic Wintergreen Women Writers Collective. Faison is married to retired US Army Colonel Carl Faison; they have three sons. Instagram: @latorial30

PRAISE:

 

Latorial Faison’s Blood at the Root is a thoughtfully and radically constructed tour de force which examines the sanguineous roots of an unrelenting tree. In this collection, Faison continues the centuries-old consideration of what it means to be Black in America—a peculiar existence in an unyielding land that has insisted on a Black presence and compliance and, when not provided, perpetuated its demise. Throughout this dynamic collection, these poems sing requiems of lament, preach eulogies for dreams deferred, and illuminate the stark imagery of what is not easily spoken regarding the nature of persistent Blackness in these times and in times before. In “Disappearing Black,” Faison poignantly evokes the souls the unsuspecting martyred—Emmett Till, Philando Castile, Trayvon Martin—and describes and mourns the expendability of Blackness seen over and over, throughout history, in which the perceived “nothingness” of Black-skinned human life is too easily “disappeared”—

 

It’s dying day/ Something like surreal/Something like coral/ Embracing freedom & flowing/ Floating all around/ You/ Like an heirloom/ Lost in a flood …. Burned down/ Carried afar off/ To some damn nation/Burning bright/With hell… Not a saint/not a sinner/ Not a soul to save you.

 

While this powerful work shines a laser beam on injustice, Faison also takes time to honor people who have fought instinctively, intuitively, and courageously to mitigate the injustices. Much to this point, in “Mama was a Negro Spiritual” the author tells the story, with unmistakable reverence, of a steadfast spiritually-connected matriarch who stood in the gaps, making “ways out of no ways,” for the people of her family and community. She says of the heroine—

 

She was a goodnight prayer/ A moon that shined down/Through my bedroom window… She laughed louder than Jim Crow’s law & cried softer than God’s peace/She was the secret I never told/the carrying/ Of some other man & woman’s burden.

 

Blood at the Root is a whirlwind of history and no holds barred vessel of truth. Readers will not walk away from it unchanged.

–Regina YC Garcia, Author of Whispers from the Multiverse and The Firetalker’s Daughter

 

These poems do not flinch. From Mama Sings the Blues to Intersections, these verses are defiant and divine…a mirror and a megaphone for Black life.

–Shani-Angela Hervey, a curious writer, blogger, and lover of words whose work appears in Grandma’s Secrets: The Art of Living a Traditional Life in a Modern World and reflects her passion for legacy, storytelling, and truth-telling.