mourning my inner[blackgirl]child

reelaviolette botts-ward’ collection of poetry, mourning my inner[blackgirl] child, is a provocative, moving, disturbing text whose pedagogical and healing possibilities are staggering. Footnotes are unusual for a collection of poems but contribute enormously to our understanding of the fragility, precarity, and vulnerability of Black girlhood/womanhood. Perhaps surprisingly, botts-ward makes a significant contribution to the embryonic field of Black Girlhood Studies. Her Black feminist analysis of what can be learned from girlhood trauma is refreshing and pioneering.
– Beverly Guy-Sheftall, PhD, Founding Director of the Women’s Research & Resource Center at Spelman College and the Anna Julia Cooper Professor of Women’s Studies at Spelman College.

Poetry as a sacred prayer, that is how this collection settled into my heart. A work of art would be an understatement.
– Alexandra Elle, author of After the Rain

In a world that marginalizes, castigates, and abuses Black women, reelaviolette botts-ward loves us. She loves us as she exposes the raw truth of those external pressures on our bodies, minds, and spirits. She loves us defiantly and brilliantly, treats us with care and attention, as she crafts a poetics infused praxis of resilience and regeneration. In this book, she fearlessly reveals her personal harm and invites us to develop an empathetic depth needed for collective change. Hers is a praxis of self-healing and freedom, and she generously holds out a hand to guide us all, too. Healing is messy and the practice of healing is hard; still, she pulls us along, persistently. She breaks through tangles and reveals the spikes that threaten within narrative, deftly composed poetic form, and an interweaving of spell-inducing metaphor. Particularly in the integration of poems written in her teenage years, reelaviolette shows us a clarity in her wisdom and healing. She loves us Black women and that is the greatest testament to her daring in this important work, for love is the foundation of any movement that truly shapes the world and the people within it anew.
– Raina León, PhD, author of Profeta Without Refuge