Your Mother Was A Panther: Stories in Verse - Paperback

by Tara Ngozi Mixon (Author)

In this experimental collection of short stories, Mixon writes about black mothers in their various stages of becoming. She examines the before, during, and after-the meaty, messy and miraculous in-betweens, and gives them endings that willingly relinquish last breaths while continuing to pulse in the mind of the reader. She is unapologetic in her assertion that black women are everything-beautiful and mysterious, magical and musical. For, in her creation, they are sometimes grand and then again diminutive or vocal or reserved, taking the form of storms and lightning, soothsayers and apparitions. Through magical and melodic verse, she offers alternative narratives, origin stories that directly traverse the things "they say about us-where we come from, and how we navigate the world." She looks beyond the science, the ideas, tropes, and stereotypes into the spiritual inheritance of women whose mere existence is a mystery.

Author Biography

Tara Ngozi Mixon was born in Orlando, Florida in 1974. She is an award-winning poet and the author of Why Women Have Hips. She served as creative director for Testify Sister Magazine and curated the Raising Poetry Anthology. She is the founder of Black Girl Narrative and a graduate of University of Central Florida's Creative Writing Program. Your Mother Was A Panther is her first short story collection.