{"title":"Alora Young","description":"\u003cp\u003eAlora Young is an American poet, actor, and activist born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. As the 2021 Youth Poet Laureate of the Southern United States, she earned national recognition for spoken word poetry confronting race, identity, and social justice. Her debut collection, Walking Gentry Home: A Memoir of My Foremothers in Verse (Hogarth\/Penguin Random House, 2022), traces nine generations of Black women in her maternal line from enslaved ancestors to her own coming-of-age. It received a starred review in Kirkus and was named a best debut by Ms. Magazine. Young graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in Spoken Word Pedagogy and is the founder of AboveGround, a creative writing and equity program for elementary school students of color.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"walking-gentry-home-a-memoir-of-my-foremothers-in-verse","title":"Walking Gentry Home: A Memoir of My Foremothers in Verse","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn \"extraordinary\" (Laurie Halse Anderson)\u003c\/b\u003e young poet traces the lives of her foremothers in West Tennessee, from those enslaved centuries ago to her grandmother, her mother, and finally herself, in this stunning debut celebrating Black girlhood and womanhood throughout American history.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cb\u003e\"A masterpiece that beautifully captures the heartbreak that accompanies coming of age for Black girls becoming Black women.\"\u003cb\u003e--Evette Dionne, author of \u003ci\u003eLifting as We Climb, \u003c\/i\u003e longlisted for the National Book Award\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: \u003ci\u003eMs. Magazine, Kirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eWalking Gentry Home\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of Alora Young's ancestors, from the unnamed women forgotten by the historical record but brought to life through Young's imagination; to Amy, the first of Young's foremothers to arrive in Tennessee, buried in an unmarked grave, unlike the white man who enslaved her and fathered her child; through Young's great-grandmother Gentry, unhappily married at fourteen; to her own mother, the teenage beauty queen rejected by her white neighbors; down to Young in the present day as she leaves childhood behind and becomes a young woman. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe lives of these girls and women come together to form a unique American epic in verse, one that speaks of generational curses, coming of age, homes and small towns, fleeting loves and lasting consequences, and the brutal and ever-present legacy of slavery in our nation's psyche. Each poem is a story in verse, and together they form a heart-wrenching and inspiring family saga of girls and women connected through blood and history. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eInformed by archival research, the last will and testament of an enslaver, formal interviews, family lore, and even a DNA test, \u003ci\u003eWalking Gentry Home\u003c\/i\u003e gives voice to those too often muted in America: Black girls and women.","brand":"Alora Young","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43793369956394,"sku":"9780593498002","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0690\/0891\/6522\/files\/walking-gentry-home-a-memoir-of-my-foremothers-in-verse-8266247.jpg?v=1762149600"}],"url":"https:\/\/thepoetryshop.com\/collections\/alora-young.oembed","provider":"The Poetry Shop LLC","version":"1.0","type":"link"}