African American
ancestry
anthology
archival
Archive
Black
Black American history
Category=DCC
Category=DCQ
diaspora
diasporic identity
epistemology
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
first generation immigrant
futurity
immigration
indigenous sovereignty
kinship
lineage
multi-lingual
poetics
poetry
political propaganda
records
redlining
slave schedules
the canon
the state
written records
Product details
- ISBN 9781643622422
- Dimensions: 152 x 228mm
- Publication Date: 27 Mar 2025
- Publisher: Nightboat Books
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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A visionary anthology that examines and reimagines the archive as a form of collective record-keeping, featuring work by Douglas Kearney, Brenda Shaughnessy, Mahogany L. Browne, and many new and emerging voices.
Inspired by Naima Yael Tokunow’s research into the Black American record (and its purposeful scarceness), Permanent Record asks, what do we gain when we engage with our flawed cultural systems of remembrance? How does questioning and creating a deep relationship to the archive, and in some cases, spinning thread from air where there is none, allow us to prefigure the world that we want? Including reflections on identity and language, diasporic and first generation lived experiences, and responses to the ways the record upholds harm and provides incomplete understandings, Permanent Record hopes to reframe what gets to be a part of collective remembrance, exploring “possibilities for speculating beyond recorded multiplicity.”
Naima Yael Tokunow is a writer, educator, artist, and editor, living in New Mexico. Her work focuses on exploring Black queer femme identity, kinship, and futurity. She is the author of three chapbooks, MAKE WITNESS (2016), Planetary Bodies (2019), out from Black Warrior Review, and Shadow Black, selected by Pulitzer Prize winner Jericho Brown for the Frontier Digital Chapbook Prize in 2020. She proudly edits the Black Voice Series for Puerto del Sol and reads for POETRY Magazine. For selections of her work, visit naimaytokunow.com. She is blessed to be Black and alive.
