Reactions after reading Nikki Finney

Reading Nikki Finney’s work in Head Off and Split, sent chills down my spine and tears to my eyes, her ability to pay homage to her experiences and the experiences of countless other people in this book is nothing short of brilliant. The ways in which America and the media use a smoke and mirror approach to every tragedy people of color are forced to endure is sickening.  Nikki Finney’s book is a book of truth, a book that cast’s out the bullshit rhetoric we have thrown on us every day from any source possible.

What poem moved me and spoke to me the loudest was the poem entitled Left.  I read this poem and then read it again and then had to do a google search, in effort to hear Nikki Finney’s voice reading this poem.  This link is what I found: https://youtu.be/Ty6z9QMFKNwI watched and listened to this many different times. I am left somewhat speechless and very much heart broken. I just watched it again and the way in which Nikki Finney reads her words is just so powerful, so extremely moving, her words pierce my skin and go straight into my heart where they meet up with my soul and I hold them there, tightly.  

I often wonder to myself how angry does the nation have to get to really enforce change, how many more innocent lives have to be lost, how many more injustices have to happen?  How do the stories which need the most longstanding reports get out to the public, how do we break down this governmental system which was built on the backs on slaves who should never be forgotten!? How does change really get implemented? I think a great start are books like this one, where the truth is told and retold!