num_pages: 215
description: Molefi Kete Asante "...Kola Boof is one of our greatest writers." 
  Immigration, Black Identity and Becoming an American Citizen
 In this powerful new poetry collection from Kola Boof (Nile River Woman), the embattled Sudanese-born author extends her controversial stamp on Religion, Sexuality, Racial Identity, Colorism, History and Pop Culture by offering up what can only be described as a scenic trance-like constant "rememory" voyage. Next to legends Sylvia Plath and Mari Evans, Kola Boof cites musical icons Curtis Mayfield, Burt Bacharach, Hal David, Charles Stepney, Lauryn Hill and Eric B. and Rakim as her major influences for writing poetry (she feels that music and vintage films dictate her writing), and in usual "Boof" fashion, the mix of sparse and epic poems go on to light a tapestry of hauntingly beautiful images evoking sensuality, nature, motherhood, nakedness, isolation, and as always, dead bolt political rage (especially powerful are the poems honoring Boof's slain friend Theo Van Gogh and SPLA leader John Garang). In one poem that questions the moral superiority that Blacks have claimed after slavery and colonialism, Boof writes "the Slave/is the devil too"...and in what is possibly the book's most powerful and confrontational piece, the epic pages-long "WHITE MAN'S MOTHER", Boof mercilously opens bare every unspoken shard of brilliance and honesty in identifying "white supremacy" and "the beauty that hides her face" as she decrees a new aesthetic for black womanhood, and ultimately, for what Boof calls "authentic black humanity" itself. This is neither your typical "Black Power Rhetoric" nor is it Sylvia Plath "goth" nor feminist earth mother prose ala Maya Angelou--Kola Boof is a stylist all unto herself and reaffirms her growing importance as the Post-Colonial Pan African voice in Black women's literature. Her relevance is undeniable. 
  PRAISE FOR KOLA BOOF
 
  "...the African Garbo"--N.Y. Times
 
  "Kola Boof is a writer of power, principle and loads of courageous perseverance"--Derrick Bell
 
  "My pick for best book of 2006 is Kola Boof's autobiography 'Diary of a Lost Girl'..--Kam Williams, Princeton

language: English
title: Mother Goddamn: Africa-Girl Poems by Kola Boof
titlecomplete: Mother Goddamn: Africa-Girl Poems by Kola Boof
publisher: Door of Kush