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A visual & lyrical declaration filled with fever & flight, REPRISE, Golden's second collection of poetry & photography maps a personal search for safety in a U.S. that offers none.
Golden's collection illuminates a path through national uprisings, anti-trans violence, family loss, and a global pandemic. These sonically playful poems and assertive, color-saturated portraits reveal a stark vulnerability that invites readers to look deeply at times of great and, possibly, liberatory uncertainty.
At its heart, this collection asks: Where is home? Who is free? What makes a nation?
Golden seeks portals towards self-liberation. In their pursuit, we're invited to witness and learn from their interior revolution, from which they emerge more free to declare themselves in small and large ways: Whether stating
I just want to wear my orange dress to the tennis courts & come back home unbothered or
I am home in the arms of the armed.
Building on their debut collection,
A Dead Name That Learned How to Live and their award-winning self-portraiture series,
On Learning How to Live, Golden honors the living siege & sorrow, rage & revival, joy & creation of being Black and trans in America.
About the author
Golden (they/them) is a Black, gender-nonconforming, trans photographer, poet, educator, curator, and community organizer raised in Hampton, Virginia (Kikotan land), and currently residing in Brooklyn, New York (Lenapehoking land). Golden is the author of
A DEAD NAME THAT LEARNED HOW TO LIVE (Game Over Books, 2022), a Lambda Literary Award finalist in 2023, and the photographic series
On Learning How to Live, a 2021 Arnold Newman Photography Prize finalist.
On Learning How to Live documents Black trans life at the intersections of surviving and living in the United States. Golden holds a BFA in photography and imaging from New York University.
Summary
In this innovative work of self-portraiture and poetry, Reprise looks at 2020 with an overarching question: what does it mean to grapple with an America that has let so many down and continues to?
Golden meditates on Blackness, nationalism, legacy, navigating what it means to live both in the North and South, and its impacts on gender expression. We’re invited to witness and learn from the interior revolution it requires to fully live.
Lovers of Golden’s expansive A Dead Name That Learned How to Live—finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry, 2023—will find echoes of sonic and vernacular play, with a stark vulnerability that confronts readers to look deeply at times of great and, possibly, liberatory uncertainty.
