Banana [ ] / We Pilot the Blood

This tête-bêche (head-to-toe) book is more than the sum of its parts: two poetic accounts of Empire by two different writers. Assembled from Senate documents detailing the 1841 slave revolt aboard the brig Creole, Quenton Baker’s we pilot the blood considers the position of blackness and the ongoing afterlife of slavery. Paul Hlava Ceballos’s Banana [ ] collages declassified CIA documents, corporate reports, horticultural papers and personal accounts into a bloody portrait of multinational exploitation. Between these lyrical interrogations is a contemplative interval conducted by the writer and scholar Christina Sharpe in collaboration with Torkwase Dyson’s Hypershapes.

Poetry. African & African American Studies. Latinx Studies. Art.