dayliGht is a dazzling collection of poems from a necessary
new voice, at once a clarion call for stories of Black women and a
rebuke of broken notions of sexuality and race.
Growing up, Roya
Marsh was considered "tomboy passing." With an affinity for
baggy clothes, cornrows, and bandanas, she came of age in an era when
the wide spectrum of gender and sexuality was rarely acknowledged or
discussed. She knew she was "different," her family knew
she was "different," but anything outside of the heteronorm
was either disregarded or disparaged.
In her stunning
debut, written in protest to an absence of representation, Marsh
recalls her early life and the attendant torments of a butch Black
woman coming of age in America. In lush, powerful, and vulnerable
verses, dayliGht unpacks traumas to unearth truths, revealing
a deep well of resilience, a cutting sense of irony, and an
astonishing fresh talent.