Beyond the Watershed by Nadia Alexis
A hybrid collection that explores the dual nature of water as both a destructive and healing force, mirroring the experiences of Black women and girls.A hybrid collection of poetry and photography, Beyond the Watershed explores the various experiences of a Haitian American daughter and her Haitian immigrant mother. Nadia Alexis crafts a moving portrayal of generational trauma, domestic violence, survival, and reclamation, using stunning imagery drawing from the body, spirit, nature, and cityscapes. Alexis traces journeys to break free–documenting pain, making space for light, becoming a reckoning, connecting with spirit, and writing oneself into new seasons of safe waters, healthy love, and transformation. This vital debut affirms that there's "nothing like the thirst / of Black girls who believe in their own dreams," even as they navigate nonlinear paths to healing. "Sometimes the clouds speak to me / & tell me to look beyond the burning," the daughter declares, as she charts her own path forward.
"If you are looking for a love story where the daughter learns through her mother's survival all the ways to eat a mango, cook a meal, bury desire, marry for thunder, or love with noise – these poems are the blueprint for discoveryAn assignment in living unabashedly or a lyric for the moved spirit, Nadia Alexis prepares a place at humanity's table for her countrymen with kind hands. A quilt of Haitian language, Kreyol kinship, visual art, and hope, Beyond the Watershed invites every reader to bathe in the brilliance of Black women's burgeoning; Alexis writes us whole within these poetic prayers." -- Mahogany L. Browne, author of Chrome Valley
"Nadia Alexis’s heartrending and heart-mending debut collection, Beyond the Watershed , asks us to bear witness to chilling intimate partner violence, then the poet, like the “wounded rooster [who] sings of morning / like it wants to forget the night, // invites [our] eyes to open like curtains.” A stunning poetic and visual account of survival that refuses to sugarcoat, Beyond the Watershed begins as prayer and ends as its own extraordinary answer to prayer." -- Eugenia Leigh, author of Bianca
"'How many times have you imagined a lush field / of passion vines & keys to all doors you wish / to escape through?' Nadia Alexis asks in Beyond the Watershed. Her debut collection shatters and mourns in a blur of white dresses, wild grasses, stripped forests, and object portraits in black-and-white photographs that both soften and deepen the starkness of the poems. Even though “there’s no choice / in how the wounding is served,” an elegant and musical toughness of spirit underlies this bold-colored, lush-natured, raw-hearted work. We meet “Èzili Dantò’s child / armed with scarred vines & silver” as she navigates the caustic inheritances of repeated intimate violations, and oceans of colonial damage that will never disappear. But we also witness elemental transformations as we hear the praise songs, when she awakens to the power of a world she can make for herself. In it, prayers and imagination, self-protection and voice-finding break the trap, make the scars of harm fade back until new skin grows over and, Alexis writes, “Everything we can dream is blooming & true.” -- Khadijah Queen, author of Anodyne
"Nadia Alexis’s heartrending and heart-mending debut collection, Beyond the Watershed , asks us to bear witness to chilling intimate partner violence, then the poet, like the “wounded rooster [who] sings of morning / like it wants to forget the night, // invites [our] eyes to open like curtains.” A stunning poetic and visual account of survival that refuses to sugarcoat, Beyond the Watershed begins as prayer and ends as its own extraordinary answer to prayer." -- Eugenia Leigh, author of Bianca
"'How many times have you imagined a lush field / of passion vines & keys to all doors you wish / to escape through?' Nadia Alexis asks in Beyond the Watershed. Her debut collection shatters and mourns in a blur of white dresses, wild grasses, stripped forests, and object portraits in black-and-white photographs that both soften and deepen the starkness of the poems. Even though “there’s no choice / in how the wounding is served,” an elegant and musical toughness of spirit underlies this bold-colored, lush-natured, raw-hearted work. We meet “Èzili Dantò’s child / armed with scarred vines & silver” as she navigates the caustic inheritances of repeated intimate violations, and oceans of colonial damage that will never disappear. But we also witness elemental transformations as we hear the praise songs, when she awakens to the power of a world she can make for herself. In it, prayers and imagination, self-protection and voice-finding break the trap, make the scars of harm fade back until new skin grows over and, Alexis writes, “Everything we can dream is blooming & true.” -- Khadijah Queen, author of Anodyne
Nadia Alexis is a poet, writer, photographer, and daughter of Haitian immigrants. Her writing is published in Poets & Writers, The Global South, Shenandoah, Wild Imperfections: An Anthology of Womanist Poems, and others.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781960327093 |
| ISBN 10 | 1960327097 |
| Title | Beyond the Watershed |
| Author | Nadia Alexis |
| Series | Emerging Voices |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | CavanKerry Press |
| Year published | 2025-03-04 |
| Number of pages | 100 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |