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Duration:03:14
Uploaded:2022-10-07
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Imani Davis (they/them) reads Patricia Smith's poem, “First Friction.”

Imani Davis:
https://twitter.com/imanixdavis
https://www.instagram.com/imanixdavis
https://www.imani-davis.com

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My name is Imani Davis.

I am a queer black writer from Brooklyn and I'll be reading “First Friction” by Patricia Smith from Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah. I first came across this poem when I was a teenager, and it felt really meaningful to hear from a voice, a black voice, a black lyric voice that knew the Christian tradition that I came up in, that it was okay to find rapture through the body, that finding pleasure through the body was not the sinest of sins.

It didn't lead automatically to damnation, in fact, it might lead to something a little bit free. And that was really something that I needed to hear at that age. And it's something that I need to hear to this day.