I am The Rage: A Black Poetry Collection (Celebrate Black Voices During National Poetry Month)

By Martina McGowan and Diana Ejaita

From Dr. Martina McGowan, I am The Rage is a Nautilis Award & BCALA 2022 Honor Poetry Award Winning collection perfect for fans of Amanda Gorman and Maya Angelou

Through a blend of personal experiences and shared collective pain, in I am The Rage, Dr. Martina McGowan engages readers in a vital dialogue about racial trauma and inequality. It seeks to transform outrage into understanding, and denial into awareness. It offers a voice to the unheard and the marginalized, harnessing the power of poetry to convey the complex emotions felt in the face of systemic racism.

In this powerful collection, you'll find:

• A stirring journey through emotions in the wake of the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the landmark Black Lives Matter protests that followed, and the ongoing attacks on the Black community
• An empathetic and authentic examination of personal and societal grief 
• A call to action and a testament to the strength of community
• An exploration of the healing power of expression, acknowledgement, and mutual understanding
• Beautiful illustrations by Diana Ejaita to accompany the raw emotion of each poem

I am The Rage serves as a mirror reflecting the shared truth of racial disparity, and a window into the lived experiences of those impacted by it.

Ideal for readers of contemporary poetry, educators, students, activists, or anyone committed to social justice and racial equality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sourcebooks
• Release date: Feb 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781728245089

Book preview

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Books. Change. Lives.

Copyright © 2021 by Martina Green McGowan, MD

Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

Cover and internal art by Diana Ejaita

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—­except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—­without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.

Published by Sourcebooks

P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-­4410

(630) 961-­3900

sourcebooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is on file with the publisher.

Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

I Am the Rage

Forever Lost between Sunlight and Shadow

Motivated Forgetting

Human Enough

Navigating This Hazardous Terrain

Benediction Number 9

There Is Too Little Time

America’s Postpartum Depression

In My Rearview Mirror

America’s Music

Numb to the News

Rhetoric

We Still Stand (Noble and Proud)

A Shocking New Race War

How Could We Not Have Appreciated That

Why We Beat Our Children

A New Song

Not Again

Be Careful What You Ask of Me

Traffic Stop

How You Hate to Rape Me

Tale of Two Georges

America, Something Is Wrong

Juneteenth

We Are Alike, You and I

BIPOC

Spoken Words Fail Me But…

Cultural Upheaval

Today, I Cannot…

What Sadness We Carry in Ordinary Times

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Back Cover

To my daughter and my best friend, Amanda, who listens to my stories and poems with great patience, gives honest critique, but more importantly, lends unwavering support to my projects.

To all the Mothers and Fathers of Children of Color.

To my father.

America, once again, has civil and racial unrest with protesters flooding our cities, calling for justice for all, with people being detained, brutalized, and murdered on the streets, as well as in their homes, without the benefit of due process. These and other heinous crimes are sadly not new to our nation, nor do they show any signs of ending.

I

Reviews for I am The Rage

[clrichm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Well-crafted, deeply emotional.

[anniemod · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Anger. This poetry collection radiates anger in ways that a book should not be able to. Anger towards the American society. Anger towards history. Anger towards the world. But at the same time there are glimpses of hope and something else - love and belonging; longing to belong and hope to exist. If you are trying to escape from the news, this is not the book for you - the news are in the middle of most of the poems - from the named victims to the unnamed ones and back; sometimes in clean text, sometimes just as a hint. It is current events commentary in a poetic form and poetry about the days we live in. And I found it impossible to read through the whole book in one sitting - 30 poems on 90 pages do not sound as much but the words and the emotions make you stop and think. Or at least they did for me. I also could not stop comparing this collection with Jasmine Mans' "Black Girl, Call Home" which I read a few days earlier. They do cover some similar topics in some of their poems but they do it in different styles and inside of different frameworks. McGowan lets her rage show; Mans seems to be calmer. But the anger and disappointment is in both. And yet both styles work.

[toric90 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Powerful. Thoughtful. Purposeful. Raw. Will definitely be revisiting.