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I received a free copy of this book in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

Author and Poet Arisa White uses poetry and creative nonfiction to tackle important topics such as paternal absences and toxic masculinity in her book, “Who’s Your Daddy”.

The Synopsis 

Who’s Your Daddy?, a hybrid memoir combining poetry and creative nonfiction, is a meditation on paternal absences, intergenerational trauma, and toxic masculinity. Who’s Your Daddy? asks us to consider how the relationships we are born into can govern us, even through absence, and shape the dynamics we find and forge as we grow. White lyrically moves across distance and time, from Brooklyn to California to Guyana. Her book enacts rituals that plumb the interior reaches of the heart to assemble disconnected and estranged parts into something whole, tender, and strong.

The Review

This was a truly powerful and moving read. The author takes readers on an emotional journey through her life, yet captures the important moments through some incredibly captivating prose and poetry. The journey for the author to learn more about her father and subsequently herself was felt in every passage and every page of this book.

The author’s way of writing is not only inviting and engaging with the reader but feels like a natural conversation throughout a lot of this book. Readers can really get a sense of the author’s life as a young, queer, black-Guyanese/American woman through some intimate and personal passages that speak of many hardships the author and so many others have had to endure. From the childhood, the author lived in the United States to the journey to find an absent father and even having to hide who she is while in a nation that condemns those who don’t love the people that the nation says they should love, this book packs a lot of important topics and themes into such a short read, yet still makes for a powerful impact. 

The Verdict

A must-read memoir and poetry book, author Arisa White’s “Who’s Your Daddy” is memorable, impactful, and heartfelt all at once. An insightful look into the journey to discover the author’s past, their parentage, and who they are, readers will not be able to put this book down and will be returning to it long after they have finished reading it. Be sure to grab your copy today!

Rating: 10/10

About the Author

ARISA WHITE is a Cave Canem fellow, Sarah Lawrence College alumna, an MFA graduate from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and author of the poetry chapbooks Disposition for Shininess, Post Pardon, Black Pearl, Perfect on Accident, and “Fish Walking” & Other Bedtime Stories for My Wife won the inaugural Per Diem Poetry Prize. Published by Virtual Artists Collective, her debut full-length collection, Hurrah’s Nest, was a finalist for the 2013 Wheatley Book Awards, 82nd California Book Awards, and nominated for a 44th NAACP Image Awards. Her second collection, A Penny Saved, inspired by the true-life story of Polly Mitchell, was published by Willow Books, an imprint of Aquarius Press in 2012. Her latest full-length collection, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, was published by Augury Books and nominated for the 29th Lambda Literary Awards. Most recently, Arisa co-authored, with Laura Atkins, Biddy Mason Speaks Up, a middle-grade biography in verse on the midwife and philanthropist Bridget “Biddy” Mason, which is the second book in the Fighting for Justice series. She is currently co-editing, with Miah Jeffra and Monique Mero, the anthology Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, which will be published by Foglifter Press in 2021. And forthcoming in February 2021, from Augury Books, her poetic memoir Who’s Your Daddy.