A Radical Act of Advocacy: Morgan Parker's "Magical Negro"

Morgan Parker’s most recent poetry collection, the unflinching Magical Negro, explores the unique intersection between what it means to be both Black and a woman surviving in today’s America. The most striking aspect of this work is just how raw and direct the poems are from start to finish. Parker hides nothing. It feels as if she is confessing her innermost secrets and musings. She is completely vulnerable and emotionally naked with her readers, writing: “This year I cried at everyone's table / I spit on the street and was late on purpose / Stepped in glass and my dog died / I saw minutes over and over.”

When I finished reading the collection, I kept returning to one word: urgency. The poems all possess this sensibility, like Parker is desperately trying to be seen. I felt Parker’s sense of urgency in these lines: “When I'm rich I will still be Black. You can't take the girl out of the ghetto until she earns it, or grows up into it.” Parker does not hide behind big words or romanticization of the abstract; instead, she is blunt, leaving no wasted space in her poems. Each line coalesces seamlessly with the next to create a depiction of Blackness that is painstakingly honest. 

Parker roots her work in popular culture and the current moment. Though she is certainly not the first poet to write about popular culture — CA Conrad and Bernadette Mayer have done so for years — Parker’s poems are unique because she focuses solely on Black popular culture. She discusses everything from Solange’s new album to the gap in Angela Davis’ teeth. With her references to contemporary figures and moments in recent history, I found myself not only understanding Parker’s work but relating to it in a way that I never have before with a collection of poems. 

Poetry often seems inaccessible. I find I labor to uncover obtuse metaphors and am constantly searching on Google to better understand them. That was not the case with Magical Negro. The subject matter of the book coupled with Parker’s straightforward writing style makes it easily digestible without compromising the art form. 

In her poem “Now More Than Ever,” Parker gives recognition to this eponymous commonly used cliché. The poem holds particular significance to me because I notice this phrase being used frequently in conversations in my own life. The opening lines are:

Now More Than Ever: Phrase used by Whites to express their surprise and disapproval of social or political conditions which, to the Negro, are devastatingly usual. Often accompanied by an unsolicited touch on the forearm or shoulder, this expression is a favorite among the most politically liberal but socially comfortable of Whites. Its origins and implications are necessarily vague and undefined. In other words, the source moment of separation between “now” and “ever” must never be specified. In some cases, it is also accompanied by a solicitation for unpaid labor from the Negro, often in the form of time, art, or an intimate and lengthy explanation of the Negro’s life experiences, likely not dissimilar to a narrative the Negro has relayed before to dead ears.”

This poem is so true to my own life experience that I felt like I could have written it. These lines validated a part of my existence. As a Black man moving through a predominantly white academic institution that prides itself on being “liberal” and “politically conscious,” I have heard the phrase “Now More Than Ever” used in this exact context too many times to count. In this poem, Parker masterfully gives voice to an everyday Black experience. This poem demonstrates that Parker is as much a cultural ethnographer as she is a poet.

While Parker quite literally writes about the tragedy of Black death in the public eye, she manages to offset this dark subject matter with moments of humor. This is what makes Magical Negro a truly special book of poems. There were moments in it where I was out of breath from laughing so hard or on the verge of tears — sometimes all in the same poem. In “Magical Negro #607” Parker writes “I want to be the first Black woman to live her life exclusively from the bathtub. I was raised to be the nigger you can trust.” 

The ability to make her readers stop and think, laugh out loud, and cry all in the course of a few stanzas makes this collection a work of pure art. 

I want to make particular note of the way Parker titles her poems and the way she uses humor to disarm the reader. I bring up her poem titles specifically because I find them to be not just humorous but flat-out hilarious. 

Some of my favorite titles include “Magical Negro #217: Diana Ross Finishing a Rib in Alabama 1990s,” “Two White Girls in The African Braid Shop Marcy and Fulton,” “I TOLD MY THERAPIST I TRIED TO MEDIATE AND SHE LAUGHED,”  and “Magical Negro #1: Jesus Christ.” These titles are unconventional and extremely specific, which adds to their comedic value. But why be funny? 

Parker uses humor to keep the reader going. The only way I am able to read about the lynching of Black bodies or the brutality white men have brought against Black women is by interspersing brief moments of comedy to relieve myself of such a massive weight. A poem like “Two White Girls in The African Braid Shop Marcy and Fulton” is disarming because the image it conjures — two white women in an African braiding shop in a traditionally Black neighborhood — is a funny mental picture. 

But the seemingly whimsical title is the starting point for a vital conversation about the white gaze, gentrification, and objectification of Black women’s hair. The effect that the title has on the reader is thus disarming because it is something that on the surface elicits laughter while also having very serious underpinnings. 

Do not be misled by Magical Negro’s comedic elements or its direct and conversational tone. It is one of the best works of American poetry in recent years. Parker’s unconventional style of writing pushes the boundary of what a poem looks like and which types of subjects we deem poetic. She takes the everyday experience of a Black woman navigating life in America and situates it within popular culture—a radical act given mainstream media’s long history of silencing the experiences of Black women.