Refuse [Paperback]

Winner of the 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Prize

Set against the backdrop of the Obama presidency, Julian Randall'sRefusedocuments a young biracial man's journey through the mythos of Blackness, Latinidad, family, sexuality and a hostile American landscape.  Mapping the relationship between father and son caught in a lineage of grief and inherited Black trauma, Randall conjures reflections from mythical figures such as Icarus, Narcissus and the absent Frank Ocean.  Not merely a story of the wound but the salve,Refuse  is a poetry debut that accepts that every song must end before walking confidently into the next music
 

Booklist
Refuse. By Julian  Randall Sept. 2018. 102p. Univ. of Pittsburgh, paper, $17 (9780822965602). 811 
In this stunning breakout collection,Randall writes with brilliance and verve about what it means to be
black, biracial, and queer, exploding delineations between the personal and political. The son of an African
American father and a Dominican mother, Randall obsesses over lineage and legacy, both biological ties
between people and the lives of exceptional individuals. In "Portrait of My Father as Sisyphus," the
speaker depicts a man who must care for his ailing mother and who, like Sisyphus, will bear this difficult
burden until one of them perishes. Elsewhere, Randall depicts the only black boy in a cold Nebraska
classroom who is subjected to "the savage lick of a whip as a means of explaining an entire history." A
native Chicagoan, Randall weaves President Obama throughout the book, drawing on shared experiences
of biracial black men, but closes the series at a vital crossroads with a Langston Hughes homage: "Obama
Speaks of Rivers but We Have Always Been on Different Shores." Throughout,Randall islƒ1