Stereo(TYPE)
The award-winning poet's darkly riotous debut, exploring stereotypes of Black male identity and sexuality in a corrupt system
Lyrical, loud and radically urgent, Jonah Mixon-Webster's debut aims its sights at the words and images that shape us and the corrupt forces that stand in the way of our freedom. Stereo(TYPE) is a reckoning and a force. It is a revision of our most sacred mythologies - and a work of documentary poetry reporting from Mixon-Webster's hometown of Flint, Michigan, where untainted tap water is still not guaranteed and the legacies of racist policies persist.
Challenging stereotypes through scenes scattered with satire, violence, and the extreme vagaries of everyday life, Mixon-Webster explores the places where space and body, race and region and sexuality and class meet and intersect. He invents visual/sonic forms, recasts poems as FAQs and transcripts, and dives into dreamscapes and modern tragedies. Interrogating language and the ways we wield it as both sword and shield, Stereo(TYPE) is a rapturous collection of vital and beautiful poems.