jason b. crawford’s YEET! envisions the Black community lifted off the earth and set free towards the stars.
These poems ask what a free Black people would look like and how we might achieve such a thing. YEET! presents a new take on Afrofuturism and utopianism. Rather than looking to a future of technological change, it steps years ahead to show how people are happier once they are no longer owned.
Speaking to racism, gun violence, colonisation, global warming, flight, joy, friendship, and noise, YEET! is about creating new worlds free from the systems of supremacy that have plagued us.
About the Author :
jason b. crawford (They/He) is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut Full-Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz is out from Sundress Publications. crawford holds a Bachelor of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University. They are a 2023 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellow. They are the winner of the Courtney Valentine Prize for Outstanding Work by a Millennial Artist, the winner of the Rhino’s Founders Prize, and a finalist for the Frontier’s Open prize. crawford was a finalist for the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid 2021 and 2022 Poetry Contest. Their work can be found or is forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Metro Weekly, AGNI Magazine, Foglifter Magazine, Four Way Review, Cincinnati Review, Frontier Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, among others. They hold an MFA in poetry from The New School. Their second collection YEET! was the winner of the 2023 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Book Prize.
Review :
crawford explores the lines between blood and flower, between histories, inevitabilities, and possibilities. —Lithub
