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Synopses & Reviews
A groundbreaking collection about Afropioneerism past and present from Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and New York Times bestselling author Rio Cortez
From a visionary writer praised for her captivating work on Black history and experience, comes a poetry collection exploring personal, political, and artistic frontiers, journeying from her family's history as Afropioneers in the American West to shimmering glimpses of transcendent, liberated futures.
In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors — some of the earliest Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after Reconstruction — Golden Ax invites readers to re-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom.
Review
"Complicate your shit, I hear myself saying more and more these days, about our two-dimensional, simplifying, reductive thinking to most everything worth thinking hard about, and so imagine my delight, or something heartier than delight, my relief, my gratitude, at Rio Cortez's beautiful book, Golden Ax, which, I love — I mean, I love this book — for its sensuous, chiseled language; for all the trees and plants (aster, bluestem, birchwood, hibiscus); for its weird and brainy sense of humor; for its palpable yearning and need; and for its entangled, complicated, unfixable, and unfixing blackness. Its unsettled and unsettling blackness. Which is really just to say: its blackness. I am so grateful for this book, and this voice, and this heart, in the world." Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights
Review
"Outstanding…the poetry in these pages is intelligent, lyrical, as invested in the past as the present and future with witty nods to pop culture." Roxane Gay, author of Hunger
Review
“Cortez maps untrodden historical and speculative terrain in poems of stunning breadth and intimacy in this exquisite debut….reflecting on class, race, and womanhood with wit and lyrical subtlety….Unflinching and generous, this bold collection opens new vistas in contemporary Black poetry." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
About the Author
Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, Rio Cortez is the New York Times bestselling author of The ABCs of Black History (Workman, 2020) and I Have Learned to Define a Field As a Space Between Mountains, winner of the 2015 Toi Dericotte and Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. Her honors include a Poets & Writers Amy Award, as well as fellowships from Cave Canem, Canto Mundo, The Jerome Foundation, and Poet's House. Rio holds an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University.