"With her latest volume, award-winning poet Jeffers presents an arresting and meticulously researched collection of poems imagining the life of remarkable life and revolutionary work of Phillis Wheatley."–Karla Strand, Ms. magazine
"'Morning shards, and a mother wondered/ if her daughter forgot her real name' writes Honorée Fanonne Jeffers in the poem 'An Issue of Mercy #1' in her latest collection. In this vast, imaginative opus on Black female genius, Fanonne Jeffers excavates the figure of Phillis Wheatley Peters, the first Black woman to publish a book in America. Here, too, is a virtuosic deconstruction of the figure of Phillis, stolen from her home in the Gambia at age 7 and enslaved in America during the 18th century - and what she means as a representation of this time in our history that's still influencing American social institutions and life today in relation to power, agency and the histories that are told."–Hope Wabuke