The double titling is another way of just announcing to an audience an intimacy, that is, I guess, always a question with my work: Who am I speaking to? Because I don’t assume some bodyless speaker when I’m writing. One thing that has always been true for the n-word is that not all black people have felt the same way about it we all have our own relationship to it. There was a time when I thought about actually calling the book just flat out My Nig, and I didn’t know how much of a spectacle that would create. Because a book is nothing but paper and language.
In the titular poem you write, “this ain’t about language / but who language holds.” Can you expand on what you mean?ĭanez Smith Part of it is, I was trying to make room for the messiness of language. Rosemarie Ho: Homie is not really called Homie: It has two names, which points to the ways the collection expands space, especially space for black queer people.
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