808s & Otherworlds

Memories, Remixes, & Mythologies

Sean Avery Medlin

• Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781953387073
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

"September's Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature"—Lambda Literary
"Most-Anticipated New LGBTQIA+ Books of 2021" —Paperback Paris

"An elegant mash of memoir, poetry, tales of appropriation, thoughts on Black masculinity, Hulk, Kanye." —Christopher Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

808s & Otherworlds announces a bold and incendiary new voice in Sean Avery Medlin. Against the backdrop of the Phoenix suburbs where they were raised, Medlin interrogates the effects of media misrepresentation on the performance of Black masculinity. Through storytelling rhymes and vulnerable narratives in conversation with both contemporary Hip-Hop culture and systemic anti-Blackness, 808s & Otherworlds pieces together a speculative reality where Blackfolk are simultaneously superhuman and dehumanized.

From the gut-wrenchingly real stories of young lovers unmythed by segregation or former classmates appropriating Black culture, to the fantastic settings of Hip-Hop songs and comic characters, Medlin weaves a tapestry of worlds and otherworlds while composing a love letter to family and self, told to an undeniably energetic beat.

Praise for 808s & Otherworlds

“September’s Most Anticipated LGBTQIA+ Literature”

—Lambda Literary

“Most-Anticipated New LGBTQIA+ Books of 2021”

—Paperback Paris

“808s & Otherworlds is a beautiful, shapeshifting collection. Medlin considers hip-hop, the suburbs, Blackness, masculinity, celebrity, superheroes, and America as both trap and origin story, exploring and exploding the categories that seek to define and limit us. Equal parts argument, meditation, and declaration, this book is a triumph and introduces a singular new voice.”

—Danielle Evans, author of The Office of Historical Corrections, and Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self

“The 808, as a sound-making machine, creates what some might say is the part of the beat that you can most feel in your chest, in your limbs, the part that leaves you trembling well after the sound departs. It makes sense, then, that what we have here, is a book that does the same. A book that rattles in the mind long after the final word. A book that has a generous dexterity and playfulness in form, but sacrifices nothing in language, in image, in metaphor. Play this one loud and let it shake whatever dormant corners you’ve got.”

—Hanif Abdurraqib, author of A Little Devil in America, Go Ahead in the Rain, and They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“In this small book, Medlin’s words pack a punch.”

—Linda Bond, Auntie’s Bookstore (Spokane, WA)

“Sean Avery Medlin’s 808s & Otherworlds is an exciting glimpse at the future of poetry. Medlin’s poems sing and remix layer after layer of cultural references. Their poems are stunning. As a fellow suburbanite, I loved glimpsing Medlin’s dystopic suburban Arizona.”

—José Olivarez, author of Citizen Illegal

“Like the light of an event horizon, this work races toward and struggles against the gravity of Blackness. Lovechild of Sun Ra and Sailor Moon, Sean Avery Medlin sings into the narrow space between hope and rage, bridging political and pop culture galaxies. If our suburbs have become burnt-out satellites circling a world long lost to racism, this book is our S.O.S., transmitting radio waves for searchers and survivors. What an ...