In “ROLL CALL: NEW TAROT NAMES FOR BLACK GIRLS,” Amber McBride treats us to a playful litany of language that twists and leaps and never stumbles. Flavored with old-time Christianity, old-time hoodoo, and a modern alchemy all her own, it talks back to prejudice, reclaims the words meant to take people down, and forges new identities that shimmer with strength and strangeness.
Amber McBride is an English professor at the University of Virginia. She is the author of several books, including the forthcoming poetry collection, Thick with Trouble (Penguin Books/Penguin Random House, 2024). Her debut young adult novel, Me (Moth) (Square Fish/Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group, 2023) was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it also won the 2022 Coretta Scott King - John Steptoe Award for New Talent. McBride low-key practices hoodoo and high-key devours books (100 or so a year keep her well fed). She is a bit of a book dragon; she collects more than she reads. In her spare time, she enjoys pretending it is Halloween every day, organizing her crystals, watching K-dramas, and accidentally scrolling through TikTok for 3 hours at a time. She believes in ghosts, and she believes in you.
Find the transcript for this show at onbeing.org.
We’re pleased to offer Amber McBride’s poem, and invite you to read Pádraig’s weekly Poetry Unbound Substack, read the Poetry Unbound book, or listen back to all our episodes.
Thomas Lux — Refrigerator, 1957
Rita Wong — flush
Maria Dahvana Headley — Beowulf
Michael Klein — Swale
Ray Young Bear — Our Bird Aegis
Suji Kwock Kim — Search Engine: Notes from the North Korean-Chinese-Russian Border
Carl Dennis — Breath
Elisa Gonzalez — To My Twenty-Four-Year-Old Self
Ofelia Zepeda — Deer Dance Exhibition
Sandra Cisneros — When in Doubt
Kandace Siobhan Walker — Three Mangoes, £1
Francisco Aragón — Asleep You Become a Continent
Conor Kerr — Winter Songs
Valencia Robin — The Coup
Eugenia Leigh — How the Dung Beetle Finds Its Way Home
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Clint Smith with Krista Tippett — What We Know in the "Marrow of Our Bones"
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BONUS: Making Space for the Erotic with Aimee Nezhukumatathil
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