Golden Ax
Penguin Poets
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Golden Ax
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Narrated by:
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Rio Cortez
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Written by:
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Rio Cortez
About this listen
Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award for Poetry
Longlisted for the 2023 PEN Open Book Award
Finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award
“Outstanding . . . the poetry in these pages is intelligent, lyrical, as invested in the past as the present and future with witty nods to pop culture.”—Roxane Gay, author of Hunger
“I’ve never read anything like it. Truly a sublime experience.”—Jason Reynolds, author of Ain’t Burned All the Bright
A groundbreaking collection about Afropioneerism past and present from Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and New York Times bestselling author Rio Cortez
From a visionary writer praised for her captivating work on Black history and experience comes a poetry collection exploring personal, political, and artistic frontiers, journeying from her family's history as "Afropioneers" in the American West to shimmering glimpses of transcendent, liberated futures.
In poems that range from wry, tongue-in-cheek observations about contemporary life to more nuanced meditations on her ancestors—some of the earliest Black pioneers to settle in the western United States after Reconstruction—Golden Ax invites listeners to re-imagine the West, Black womanhood, and the legacies that shape and sustain the pursuit of freedom.
©2022 Rio Cortez (P)2022 Penguin AudioWhat the critics say
Named one of the Best Books of 2022 by The Houston Chronicle
Named one of the "Books We Love" by NPR
“With a careful balance of lyric and detail, Cortez considers the pursuit of freedom passed down to her . . . [and] shows us how looking back can be beautiful and how claiming that past is the loudest celebration of it.”—NPR, “Books We Love”
“[Golden Ax] advances an intriguing, revolutionary argument: that the present is not simply a product of what has come before, but engaged in a constant, generative conversation with the past; that the past, in some ways, might be formed by what is to come. Sinuous and beautifully crafted, even the negative space on these pages transmits a complementary narrative of loss and yearning. Cortez alters both her own past, and ours, by acknowledging her people, integrating them into our present tense, and projecting them into a future in which true freedom might be possible.” —Tope Folarin, Vulture
“Cortez examines how her family came to the American West after Reconstruction—and reimagines the landscape through the lens of Black people who both embody and defy its realities. In the process, we are pushed to envision our own futures on the frontier, united by a collective aspiration to freedom.”—Essence