Going Unarmed into the Wail by Karen Wangare Leonard

Going Unarmed into the Wail by Karen Wangare Leonard

Going Unarmed Into the Wail is an intense, intimate chapbook that wrestles with what it is to be a product of the adoption-industrial complex. With rich visuals, the poems in this chapbook create space that leaves room to interrogate relationships with historic and present systemic violence, queerness, disability, and homecoming. In a society that heavily celebrates adoption, this bravely vulnerable collection pays tender attention to what makes and breaks a family, acutely aware that not everyone survives the persistent grief of displacement. 

This work offers readers of all backgrounds a chance to be honest about how we got here. For those directly impacted by family regulation, surveillance, policing, and adoption, this writing is a refuge that disrupts the isolation these exploitative systems intend. 

Can there be an alternative way forward?

Recommended in episode 286

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