{"title":"Tawanda Mulalu","description":"\u003cp\u003eTawanda Mulalu's work delves into the complexities of human experience through a vibrant lens of arts and culture. With evocative titles like \u003cem\u003ePlease Make Me Pretty\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eI Don't Want to Die\u003c\/em\u003e, the narratives explore themes of identity, vulnerability, and the search for meaning in contemporary life.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eReaders can expect a unique blend of emotional depth and cultural insight, where creativity meets raw honesty. Mulalu's writing invites reflection on personal transformation and the challenges of existence with both sensitivity and boldness.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"please-make-me-pretty-i-dont-want-to-die-by-tawanda-mulalu-9780691239033","title":"Please make me pretty, I don't want to die","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe debut collection of an exciting new voice in poetry\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ePlease make me pretty, I don't want to die\u003c\/em\u003e explores tactility, sound, sensuality, and intimacy. Set across the four seasons of a year, these fresh and original poems by Tawanda Mulalu combine an inviting confessional voice and offbeat imagery, and offer an appealing mixture of seriousness and humour.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe speaker of these poems probes romantic and interracial intimacy, the strangeness and difficulty of his experiences as a diasporic Black African in White America, his time working as a teacher's assistant in a third-grade classroom, and his ambivalent admiration for canonical poets who have influenced him, especially Sylvia Plath. Juxtaposing traditional forms such as sonnets and elegies with less orthodox interjections, such as prose-poem \"prayers\" and other meditations, the collection presents a poetic world both familiar and jarring—one in which history, the body, and poetry can collide in a single surprising turn of image: \"The stars also suffer. Immense and dead, their gasses burn \/ distant like castanets of antebellum teeth. My open window \/ a synecdoche of country.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Hachette Aotearoa New Zealand","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47597516947692,"sku":"9780691239033","price":54.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/eaf23674d47e607538d0418da4f0d95c.jpg?v=1777958277"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/tawanda-mulalu.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}