An Optimism
Cameron Awkward-Rich

Against our terribly ambivalent present—in which Black, trans, and other minoritized forms of life seem at once more possible than ever and, also, relentlessly under attack—An Optimism gives us poems in search of ways to survive—and even thrive.
Anchored by an epistolary sequence directed to the 20th century poet and activist Pauli Murray, and looking to the work of other trans, queer, and black feminist writers like Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, and June Jordan for company and counsel, Cameron Awkward-Rich situates us in spaces intimate and capacious, from lovers’ beds to the Gamma Quadrant across the Milky Way.

“A folded portal made of paper with literary ancestors in every crease, this book turns and turns over what it is to be, to want, to have already lost. Cameron Awkward-Rich offers us something more generous than possibility: he offers us the reckoning of our own wonder, care and incommensurability.”—Alexis Pauline Gumbs

Cameron Awkward-Rich is the author of two previous collections of poetry: Sympathetic Little Monster  and Dispatch. His creative work has been supported by fellowships from Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and the Lannan Foundation. Also a scholar of trans theory and expressive culture in the U.S., he is the author of The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment and is Associate Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Paperback / $19.00 (Can. $25.00) / ISBN 978-0-89255-621-2 / 128 pages / Poetry