Afterlife

This thesis is the culmination of the work I have written during my time in the program. These poems situate themselves in conversation with and were largely inspired by Christina Sharpe’s In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. I encountered this text in Dr. Manuel-Scott’s “Black Bodies, Policing, and Historical Memory” course in the fall of 2020. In the text, Sharpe asserts that black death is a foundational aspect of American life, and as such, anti-blackness is embedded in American democracy. The poems in this thesis seek to highlight the inevitability and necessity of black death in this country, as well as the intrinsic role that black women, particularly mothers, unintentionally play in perpetuating cycles of violence against black bodies.