A Toast in the House of Friends

Don’t expect sense from these poems, in which grief, politics, literary theory, and sexuality interweave. But do expect language surprise and beautiful metaphors… . When [Akilah] Oliver presents her experiences in metaphor-rich language, the reader feels what she feels: incredible loss, infinite pain. -Library Journal

An extraordinary gift for everyone. -Alice Notley

Written for her son, Oluchi McDonald (1982-2003), Akilah Oliver’s poems incorporate prose, theory, and lyric performance into a powerful testimony of loss and longing. In their journey through the borderlands of sorrow, they grapple with violence, find expression in chants, and, like the graffiti she analyzes, become a place of public and artistic memorial. If memory is the act of bearing witness, she writes, then the dream is a friend driving us somewhere.

Akilah Oliver is the author of the she said dialogues, recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Born and raised in Los Angeles, she currently lives in Brooklyn and curates the Monday Night Reading Series at the Poetry Project.