Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
“Jasmine Reid writes a shapeful, theoretical work involved in the rigorous attending to emergent selves and the languages made in calling them into being.” —aracelis girmay
Interlocutor Goddess explores the creation of a trans language for selfhood within an exilic state of "ecstatic grief."
Reid's experimental work challenges societal norms, particularly the family as a political construct while reflecting on the trans experiences of a queer Black woman. The poems grapple with oppressive systems of separation and colonial legacies, rejecting extractive, empire-driven paradigms, and gender essentialism. Within her collection, Reid envisions alternative, ethical ways of being, rooted in unity and wholeness and finds kinship with the rhythms and lifeways of the natural world—soil, stars, and water.Her poetry employs a trans-lyricism, weaving together dual meanings through homonyms, homophones, and portmanteaus to create a layered, fugitive language that resists rigid classifications. At its core, Interlocutor Goddess is an act of transfiguration, a celebration of girlhood, and a reclamation of wholeness for all who exist beyond imposed boundaries.
"Self-expression ought to be auto-apocalyptic but people tend to hold back, as if they think they’re standing still or can afford to. Elsewhere, as mediate bloom, having gathered enough to give way more away, Jasmine Reid asks, who do you think you’re talking to? You can’t ask until you’ve had to sing an answer. Because it bears this divine imperative, Interlocutor Goddess is a beautifully open chance."—Fred Moten, author of All That Beauty
"Interlocutor Goddess is a restless sensuality with that tongue in your mouth. Jasmine Reid coaxes every line to work, to wend, and sometimes to wound in her kaleidoscopic debut. Here collides the chain gang’s ‘Hah!’ with a ‘sticky & pretty’ hyme. And that’s two sections from a lyric essay rattling with specters. And after that? She writes, ‘my head a black planet.’ Indeed, y’all. Reading Reid is to ready yourself for staying dazzled and addled stanza after stanza then coming to find out you weren’t ready. It’s OK: Interlocutor Goddess came to talk (and take) you through it. I’ll see you ’cross the other side." —Douglas Kearney, author of Sho