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This innovative debut mixes poetry, prose, and photographs to chronicle Poetic’s family history and roots in the Afro-Caribbean diaspora. He describes his family’s reverence for vinyl records and how his own interest developed into a passion for remixing, sampling, and revisiting albums and other emblems of Black life. Fittingly, the book explores Poetic’s polyphonic relationship to identity; in a prose section, his first visit to Jamaica puts into perspective the annual jibes his mother endures as the cook of the Thanksgiving Day meal: “That holiday gathering was a chance for her to perform a cultural ritual that would affirm her membership in our clan; the jokes turned it into a scarification ceremony.” The speaker travels to Cuba to uncover more familial connections, including a meeting between relatives that must be moderated by a translator, causing the speaker to reflect, “our native tongues are not indigenous/ to our bodies, they are proofs of purchase replicating/ on autopilot, auction-block fugitives pledging allegiance/ to the branding iron.” Poetic’s generous account carefully excavates the many departures and returns of his life. (July)