In St. Paul this weekend, a book launch celebrates Afro-Indigenous poetry, a gallery show brings together Black artists experimenting with form and texture, and installations by a young Hmong American artist explores belonging across borders and generations.
Poetry launch honors Afro-Indigenous identity
In her debut poetry memoir “Sweetgrass and Soul Food,” Minneapolis-based writer and educator Marique B. Moss invites readers into “Blindian Country” (Black-Indian Country), a personal and cultural landscape she describes as existing outside of maps and Census boxes, where “braids meet beadwork,” powwows meet block parties, and the kitchen is blessed with “burning cedar and Motown.”
Through 55 poems, Moss draws from lived experience as an Afro-Indigenous woman, tracing her journey toward cultural pride shaped in part by a mentor who helped her fully embrace her Indigenous identity.
“I had a teacher who helped me internalize: Marique, you are Indigenous. You’re Native American. You are a Hidatsa woman through and through,” Moss said. “It was something that I knew but I wasn’t ready to announce to the world. Now I say it with my whole chest.”…