‘Black Girl, Call Home’ Helped Jasmine Mans Show Up for the Women in Her Life
The poet pens a book-length love letter to Black girls and women on our journey of discovery and healing
Spoken word artist and poet Jasmine Mans’ latest poetry collection, Black Girl, Call Home, is an invitation inside all the bitter and sweet moments that exist between the space of being a girl and being a woman. The crick in your neck after getting your hair washed in the kitchen sink. The sound of your colorful hair barrettes clacking against one another. The soggy feeling of your pillow after you’ve cried your eyes out after getting into it with your mother.
Some people might be familiar with the Newark, New Jersey, native’s work from her time as part of the Strivers Row poetry collective that featured artists like Hamilton’s Carvens Lissaint. It’s where Mans first began to accrue internet stardom via YouTube performances viewed by hundreds of thousands of people. It wouldn’t be until 2016, after her video performance of the poem “Footnotes for Kanye,” that people started to pay more attention to the poet.
Now, Mans is taking her writing career to the next level with her latest collection of poems that, just from the cover alone, will give readers a rush of tenderness and nostalgia.
