How to Identify Yourself with a Wound by KB
In this beautiful chapbook, KB chronicles their experiences — of Blackness, queerness, transness, class — and the spaces between. There is no doubt that due to various forms of inequity and colonialism, society views certain identities as "wounds", but what does it mean to define yourself outside of the pain of being marginalized? In this book, KB recognizes inequity and subverts it. In this book, the main speaker tells their own stories, and they don't shy away from the complexities of harm and the mess that it leaves.
"The poems in How to Identify Yourself with a Wound pull no punches. Raw honesty paired with concise language inhabit and fully embody a life shaped by the intersection of race, class, sexuality, and gender. This is my favorite kind of poetry, necessary and urgent, revealing and saving and healing and re-creating both poet and reader."
— ire’ne laura silva, author of CUICACALLI/House of Song, 2020 Saguaro Poetry Prize judge