Black Lives, Lines, and Lyrics: Lines, Lyrics, and Laments for Black Life, Love, Loss, and Liberty

I don't need a social-struggle meter stick to measure which era in American history was harder for Black people. All withstanding, I believe that the 21^st Century has been especially difficult on Black people of all ages, genders, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds. And, someday, years from now, people, especially Black people, will need an account of this period in our lives. I think, now, more than ever, that our 21^st Century racial struggles and our individual and collective determination to confront racism with uncompromising courage and resolve made us all appreciate Blackness just a little more than we ever did before. At the time I began writing this book in June 2020, America was still tiptoeing around having an honest discussion about what it really means to exist while Black in this country. In conversations on and offline, I continually found myself saying, "all lives can't matter if Black lives don't matter" and explaining why the demand for equality and equity isn't radical. I was so exhausted from constantly explaining how and why America's incongruous and duplicitous institutions, systems, and national ideals, symbols, and documents are not an accurate reflection of Black life and experiences in this country that I decided to write about it. I thought, 'I don't know if others are writing about it, too, but there is room for more than one voice, one experience, and one portrayal of Black Lives, Lines, and Lyrics.'

Black Lives, Lines, & Lyrics conveys the Black experience through lines and verse, cementing melanin memories in the wake of the unremitting social epidemic that plagues America. Divided into three measures, Black Lives, Lines, & Lyrics provides rhythmical reflections on black experiences with racial and social injustice, a lyrical account of the lives lost to police brutality and racial violence, and a poetic perspective of living while Black in the 21^st century. May these Lines, Lyrics, and Laments for Black Life, Love, Loss, and Liberty help you gain an appreciation for the beauty and endurance of Black people while bringing the realities of the discrimination and racism that Black people face in America to the forefront of your social consciousness, conversations, and community.

Ultimately, this book was written about Black people, for Black people, and to Black people, but it is also, an open and standing invitation to non-Black people to get to know us, Black people, better: all of us. Black people are not monolithic, not as individuals or as a whole. That said, I wrote about the collective Black experience from the perspective of a Black American, Bahamian, and Black Native woman whose own lived experiences within the context of each of those spaces give shape to each poem. Even my perspective isn't the Black perspective. It's simply one perspective of many.