American Sex Tape

by Jameka Williams

University of Wisconsin Press, 2022
Paper: 978-0-299-34084-1
Library of Congress Classification PS3623.I55677A84 2022
Dewey Decimal Classification 811.6

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK
Moving beyond a biting indictment of American popular culture, Jameka Williams captures the reader’s gaze and stares right back: “I’m sorry, America, but I’m rich in baby oil & paperback novels only these days. So finish paying for me with what is mint. No conditions.” In this stunning debut collection, Williams offers a deeply personal investigation into how Americans (herself included) have been duped, buying into classism, sexism, and racist beauty ideals, while sacrificing the freedom of self-love and self-determination. With whip-fast profanity and fiery humor, she charts a tender, exalting, and vibrant path to freedom from mirrors, stages, and screens.

Fiercely feminist, Black, American, and powerful, Williams speaks for a generation of obsessive social media influencers and consumers, revealing the complex ways in which we are all actors, witnesses, and victims in our public and private performances. Though we may be permanent residents of this soulless cultural landscape, this stunning collection refuses to let it define us.

I am not the same machine which came rambling
off the conveyor belt, hugging the bolts & wires
spilling from her vivisection. I’m last year’s model
with a sleeker, softer system of cool disdain for
my Internet addictions.
—Excerpt from "I Intend to Outlast"

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Jameka Williams holds an MFA in poetry from Northwestern University. Her poetry has been published in Prelude Magazine, Gigantic Sequins, Muzzle Magazine, Yemassee Journal, Tupelo Quarterly, Jet Fuel Review, and Oyez Review, among others. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is a Best New Poets 2020 finalist, published annually by the University of Virginia, and is featured in New American Press’s New Poetry of the Midwest 2019. She resides in Chicago, Illinois.

REVIEWS

“Every now and then, but rarely, a book of poems comes along that is biblical in its authority and iconoclastic in its capacity to rearrange or explode the furniture, the nation, and the self. American Sex Tape™ is one of those.”—Diane Seuss, author of frank: sonnets

“Split between a love of watching and the fear created by it, Jameka Williams demolishes misogynist, racist logic with weaponized line breaks and wrecking-ball wit. And then does something stranger, braver: she looks into the camera. Because this is a book about taking back power, it’s also about the thin line between pleasure and collusion. ‘I love to see it,’ she admits, ‘I love to live inside that camera’s orgasm.’ Complex and messy and necessary in all the ways sex is, American Sex Tape™ is brilliant Black feminist truth.”—Brian Teare

“A triumph of a debut. Part cultural criticism, part self-investigation, Williams defies genre convention. Her poems burst onto the page with purpose, veracity, tenacity, and the self-assuredness of a long-established literary dynamo.”—Laura Joyce-Hubbard, TriQuarterly

TABLE OF CONTENTS

See other books on: African American & Black | American | Poetry | Women Authors
See other titles from University of Wisconsin Press

Nearby on shelf for American literature / Individual authors / 2001-: