{"product_id":"room-swept-home-9780819502131","title":"Room Swept Home","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIntimate and sweeping poetry that examines race and lineage\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (2025)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHonor Book for Best Poetry (2025), BCALA Literary Awards \/ Black Caucus of the American Library Association\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRoom Swept Home\u003c\/i\u003e serves as a gloriously rendered magnifying glass into all that is held in the line between the private and public, the investigative and generative, the self and those who came before us. In a strange twist of kismet, two of Bingham-Risher's ancestors intersect in Petersburg, Virginia, forty years before she herself is born: her paternal great-great-great grandmother, Minnie Lee Fowlkes, is interviewed for the Works Progress Administration Slave Narratives in Petersburg in 1937, and her maternal grandmother, Mary Knight, is sent to Petersburg in 1941, diagnosed with \"water on the brain\"--postpartum depression being an ongoing mystery--nine days after birthing her first child. Marrying meticulous archival research with Womanist scholarship and her hallmark lyrical precision, Bingham-Risher's latest collection treads the murky waters of race, lineage, faith, mental health, women's rights, and the violent reckoning that inhabits the discrepancy between lived versus textbook history, asking: What do we inherit when trauma is at the core of our fractured living?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e[sample poem]\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eXI. the more ground covered, the more liberated you became\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eI am scared my mind will turn on me. \u003cbr\u003eI am scared I will be naked in a burning \u003cbr\u003ehouse. I am scared my children won't outpace me.\u003cbr\u003eI am scared my children (who aren't made by me) \u003cbr\u003ebelieve I am a sad imitation of the others.\u003cbr\u003eI am scared I will gather in a room\u003cbr\u003ewhere everyone will ask me to remember\u003cbr\u003eand when I don't lie they'll say I'd hate to be you. \u003cbr\u003eI've lived long enough to be scared my kidneys \u003cbr\u003ewill give out on me. I've lived long enough to know just \u003cbr\u003ewhen they should. I have never shared my fears \u003cbr\u003ewith anyone; I am scared they will map the land \u003cbr\u003eand take liberties. Will the women be ashamed? \u003cbr\u003eI'm scared to ask. What will live again? What will die with me?\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eREMICA BINGHAM-RISHER (Norfolk, VA) is director of quality enhancement plan initiatives at Old Dominion University. Her books include \u003ci\u003eSoul Culture: Black Poets, Books, and Questions That Grew Me Up\u003c\/i\u003e, and\u003ci\u003e What We Ask of Flesh \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e Starlight \u0026amp; Error\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Wesleyan University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51589800100114,"sku":"9780819502131","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_970f861d-cf37-4f16-bbf9-5206152e6727.jpg?v=1756807087","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/room-swept-home-9780819502131","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}