Blood at the Root

Blood at the Root by Latorial Faison is a searing, lyrical collection of poetry that confronts the enduring trauma and legacy of Black life in America. With unflinching honesty and poetic force, Faison crafts an elegy, an anthem, a call to resistance-speaking directly to the historical and ongoing violence, erasure, and resilience that define the African American experience. Spanning themes of racial injustice, generational pain, ancestral reverence, and the sacredness of Black identity, the collection explores the everyday and the epic-from lynchings and systemic oppression to the quiet, powerful moments of Black motherhood, survival, and joy. Faison invokes the spirits of icons and martyrs, from Nat Turner to Trayvon Martin, infusing her verse with historical gravitas and spiritual urgency. Divided into powerfully titled pieces such as "When Black Lives Mattered" and "A Eulogy for America's Black Boy," Blood at the Root is both a literary reckoning and a poetic archive. Faison's voice, bold and evocative, reclaims the narratives of those too often silenced and demands a reckoning from America's conscience. This collection is not just a book of poems-it is a ritual, a resistance, and a testament to the enduring strength and beauty of Black life, written with the prophetic clarity of a poet who bears witness and speaks truth to power.