Authors Talk: Douglas Manuel

Today we are pleased to feature poet Douglas Manuel as our Authors Talk series contributor. His talk is a reading of the lyrical essay that he wrote reflecting on his poem, “Who’s Little Boy Are You?”

The poem’s title comes from a question in James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, that points at belonging and ‘fissures between the messages of the uplifting Black church and street survival tactics’ that are “crucial to understanding the Black experience in America.” What follows is a deeply personal rumination from Douglas about his father and who belongs to whom, if anyone ever really does. Finally, Douglas reflects on the way that he represents his father in other poems including “Little Fires Left by Travelers.”

You can read and listen to both of Douglas’s aforementioned poems in Superstition Review Issue 19.

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