Blood on the Leaves by Hope Wabuke is a searing and lyrical poetry collection that explores the intimate, haunted relationship between Blackness and the natural world. At once a site of refuge and rupture, nature emerges as both witness to generational trauma and a space of beauty, survival, and fierce possibility.Hewn from historical record and personal experience, these poems unearth the brutal legacy of slavery and the enduring persistence of systemic r...

Sprung from Wabuke’s Hairpin viral essay, “Five Moments in the Life of a Black Mother”: a deeply poignant memoir in essays exploring the cultural, historical, and personal trauma of Black motherhood in America.When Hope Wabuke became a mother, she was thrilled—and yet she could not separate her excitement and love from her anxiety. She knew the names of the unarmed Black boys and girls lost in recent years: Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, Jordan Da...

As a black mother, every moment of the day I walk in fear for my son's survival . . .What does it mean to raise a black son in modern America? How can a mother help her child navigate the racism they experience every day without losing his life or his joy? And how can she keep him safe in a world that is trying to kill him?When Hope Wabuke became a mother, she welcomed her son with open arms, yet could not separate her excitement and love from her ...

This visceral and revelatory poetry collection tells the story of a family’s journey to flee the murderous reign of Uganda’s Idi Amin only to land in a racist American landscape. Wabuke digs deeply into a personal and ancestral history to bring these poems to life, articulating what it means to live in a Black female body navigating a diaspora haunted by British colonization and American enslavement.

The Long Devotion is a collection of poems, essays, and writing prompts that celebrates motherhood and creates a space, as poet Molly Spencer has written, to “tell an unlovely truth about family life and not have to take it back.”The poets in this book represent and describe a wide range of experiences. They write about encountering the world anew through their children; intersections of parenting and race; single parenting; adoptive, foster, and step-parenting; life with ...

Sprung from Wabuke’s Hairpin viral essay, “Five Moments in the Life of a Black Mother”: a deeply poignant memoir in essays exploring the cultural, historical, and personal trauma of Black motherhood in America.When Hope Wabuke became a mother, she was thrilled—and yet she could not separate her excitement and love from her anxiety. She knew the names of the unarmed Black boys and girls lost in recent years: Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown, Jordan Da...