PRAISE FOR

Morgan Parker

“Morgan Parker’s bombastic second book profoundly expresses a black millennial consciousness with anger and appetite. Everywhere Parker looks, she sees a wildly messed-up world—‘There’s far too many of me dying’; ‘The President be like / we lost a young boy today.’ She also answers a personal and public mandate to re-envision it through humor and confrontation.”

—NPR

“A brash, risqué collection that explores what it means to be a black woman in contemporary American culture. Parker . . . is as self-assured as the women who appear in these pages, including Queen Latifah, Nikki Giovanni, and Michelle Obama . . . Each woman in this fierce collection wants to be seen for who she is, not what society wants her to be, and each demands respect.”

—The Washington Post

“For Parker, there is no divide between what can and cannot exist as poetic language . . . Parker’s brilliance is found in her ability to complicate the gaze on black womanhood. By depicting the varieties of experience, from Hottentot Venus to Michelle Obama, Parker is able reclaim black womanhood as beautiful in its entirety.”

—The Nation

“Morgan Parker’s second book of poetry, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, isn’t just the most ferocious collection to be published this year. It’s also an antidote to the culture of hate and white supremacy reincarnated by our new administration. . . . It’s part psychic excavation, part historical exorcism. Having watched Nina Simone in concert on YouTube most of my adult life, I’ve finally found an experience to compare that to.”

—Interview

“Parker’s poems brings heat to the art of Mickalene Thomas, the racial politics of Barack Obama’s presidency, the body politics of Beyoncé, and the danger of moving through America in a black body: ‘I walk into a bar. / I drink a lot of wine and kiss a Black man on his beard. / I do whatever I want because I could die any minute. / I don’t mean YOLO I mean they are hunting me.’”

—Time

“Easily one of the most compelling poetry collections of the past few years, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé is fresh, unexpected, and intimate; an equally devastating and uplifting exploration of black womanhood; and a tender and lovely celebration of life.”

—Shondaland

“Parker’s poetry is a sledgehammer covered in silk, exposing black women’s vulnerability and power and underscoring what it means to be magical and in pain.”

—BuzzFeed

“The first thing you have to understand is that Morgan Parker is one of the most fascinating poets working today. She writes poems that are clever, beautiful, political, playful, breathtaking . . . I know I’m excited to see what happens and thrilled to watch Parker continue killing it on the page.”

—Book riot

“Employing fierce language and eschewing fear of unflattering light, Parker pays homage to the deep roots and collective wisdom of black womanhood . . . Parker’s poems are as flame-forged as a chain locked around soft ankles.”

—Publisher’s Weekly

Starred Review

“These words, brilliant, lovely, and sharp like a diamond, cut me deeply and left me in awe of Parker’s writing. This book is an exciting contribution to the rich legacy of Black feminist art, literature, poetry, and music that daily adds more complex representations of Black American womanhood.”

—Bitch

“Outstanding collection of poems. So much soul. So much intelligence in how Parker folds in cultural references and the experiences of black womanhood. Every poem will get its hooks into you. And of course, the poems about Beyoncé are the greatest because Beyoncé is our queen.”

—Roxane Gay

“There are more beautiful things than Beyoncé in these pages because, as Morgan Parker writes in poems channeling the president’s wife, the Venus Hottentot, and multiple Beyoncés: ‘We’re everyone. We have ideas and vaginas, / history and clothes and a mother.’ The kind of verve the late New York school Ted Berrigan would have called ‘feminine marvelous and tough’ is here, as well as the kind of vulnerability that fortifies genuine daring. This is a marvelous book. See for yourself. Morgan Parker is a fearlessly forward and forward-thinking literary star.”

—Terrance Hayes

“There is not a more daring artist, or anyone I’d rather read in the twenty-first century, than Morgan Parker.”

—Kiese Laymon