Dead Girl Cameo: A Love Song in Poems

(Paperback)

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A dazzling docupoetic debut collection interweaving ripped-from-the-headlines pop culture herstories with the personal narratives of Whitney Houston, Aaliyah, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and others, to interrogate celebrity, identity, sexuality, industry abuse, death, and the afterlives of stardom. A dazzling docupoetic debut collection interweaving ripped-from-the-headlines pop culture herstories with the personal narratives of Whitney Houston, Aaliyah, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, and others, to interrogate celebrity, identity, sexuality, industry abuse, death, and the afterlives of stardom. "I made, of my bones, an earth for you- turned the oceans your favorite shade of light, that deepened, nearly bruised dusk. reflected in my palms, what I've made into water glows amethyst- when you drink from it, you are iridescent" In Dead Girl Cameo, m. mick powell closely examines the experiences of Aaliyah Haughton, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopes, Whitney Houston, and other notable superstars who died tragically too soon. How did these starlets challenge conventional representations of Black femininity and friendship, and forever transform the musical landscape How were the artistries and addictions of these women of color impacted from surviving in the limelight and, often, in the very same industry as their abusers How did the literal and metaphorical deaths of these Black women superstars establish legacies of Black queer femme existence and afterlife In stunning imagery and sensual wordplay using ekphrasis, erasure, digital collage, archival research, and speculative nonfiction in verse, Dead Girl Cameo traverses the intimate realms of superstars to reconfigure Black girlhood, survivorhood, femme friendship, and queer fandom.

Author Bio

m. mick powell is a queer Black Cape Verdean femme, a poet, an artist, an Aries, and author of the chapbooks threesome in the last Toyota Celica and chronicle the body. Their poems have been nominated for the Best of the Net Anthology and a Pushcart Prize, and appear in RHINO, Muzzle, Up the Staircase Quarterly, and elsewhere. mick is a professor of gender and sexuality studies at the University of Connecticut and an adjunct in Bay Path University's MFA in creative nonfiction writing program. A former Tin House Resident, she enjoys chasing waterfalls and being in love.