There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé

The only thing more beautiful than Beyoncé is God, and God is a Black woman sipping rosé and drawing a lavender bath, texting her mom, belly-laughing in the therapist’s office, feeling unloved, being on display, daring to survive. Morgan Parker stands at the intersections of vulnerability and performance, of desire and disgust, of tragedy and excellence. Unrelentingly feminist, tender, ruthless, and sequined, these poems are an altar to the complexities of Black American womanhood in an age of non-indictments and déjà vu, and a time of wars over bodies and power. These poems celebrate and mourn. They are a chorus chanting: You’re gonna give us the love we need.

Morgan Parker is the author of There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé (2017), Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night (2015), and the forthcoming poetry collection Magical Negro (2019). Her debut young adult novel Who Put This Song On? is forthcoming from Delacorte Press in late 2019, and her debut book of nonfiction will be released in 2020 by One World.