In a powerful and urgent follow-up to his award-winning debut Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, Charif Shanahan's poems in Trace Evidence explore the complexities of mixed-race identity, the tension of queer longing, the difficulty of being present in a divided social world, and the brutal legacy of anti-Blackness in the United States and abroad. At the collection's center sits "On an Overnight to Agadir," a poem about Shanahan's journey to his mother's home country of Morocco, cut short by a devastating bus accident that broke his neck--an injury he miraculously survived. In the aftermath, Shanahan ruminates on mortality, belonging, and the mysteries of fate.

With rich lyricism and tenderness, Trace Evidence centers the racial periphery and addresses our violent colonial past, the "evidence" that persists in traces, insisting that those legacies are relevant to, and the responsibility of, everyone. Shanahan acknowledges the desire we all share for true intimacy and connection, and offers a language we might all understand in a world intent on classifying and dividing.

Item Information Item Information

Format: TradePaperback
Author: Shanahan, Charif
ISBN: 9781953534668
Condition: New
Publication Year: 2023

Language: English

Trace Evidence

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