Portfolio
BLACK UNDER
Poems by Ashanti Anderson
Poems by Ashanti Anderson
Winner of the Spring 2020
Black River Chapbook Competition
Black River Chapbook Competition
Black Under layers outward perception with internal truth to offer an almost-telescopic examination of the redundancies—and incongruences—of marginalization and hypervisibility. Anderson torques the contradictions of oppression, giving her speakers the breathing room to discover their own agency. In these pages, declarations are reclamations, and joy is not an aspiration but a birthright.
Available in paperback and ebook.
Buy from Black Lawrence Press or Bookshop.org.
Praise for Black Under
"Black Under defies strict categorization, save for the fact that it is altogether excellent."
—Marcus Wicker, author of Silencer and Maybe the Saddest Thing
"Witness Anderson's haunting and marvelous skill."
—Kay Ulanday Barrett, cultural strategist and author of More Than Organs a 2021 Stonewall Honor Award Book
"This book... defies what poetry is supposed to look like, what it's supposed to read like; how it's supposed to make you feel."
—MaddBlackReads
"Each piece provides the reader with an awakening..."
—Peachy Keen Reviews & Bibliotherapy
"Anderson is a fierce storyteller, unamking and recreating images, shifting what language can do—will do."
—Luther Hughes, founder of Shade Literary Arts
(selected)
POEMS
My Ancestors Who Learned to Read by Staring at the Bible, in Limp Wrist
sister, pick which battle to win when you choose to lose the war, in The Rumpus
Slave Ship Haibun; Acrostic for my Last Breaths, in Jet Fuel Review
Self-Portrait in Blackface; Self-Portrait as Overseer; Resignation, in Tupelo Quarterly
Self-Portrait as Kendrick Lamar, Laughing to the Bank, in Poetry
If, in World Literature Today
Ode to Black Skin, in Poetry (audio available)
Cleaning Up Men's Messes; Mamie Till on Carolyn Bryant's Confession, in Foothill Journal
Goddam, in Really System
Teach Me to Float, in Panoply
(selected)
Essays
Deep Nostalgia (audio available)
Stage & Screen
Study Room (2018)
Short Film | Credit: Writer
Winner of the 2018 Haley's Flight Page-to-Screen Short Film Competition. A young woman races against the clock to finish her term paper on time while being harassed by annoying classmates.
Bleak Magic (2021)
One Act Play | Credit: Writer
When a conjure woman perfects a potion for "Black power", she uncovers the nefarious desires of her clients.
GAMES
