Twerk - Softcover

Poetry. African American Studies. Peformance Studies. TWERK unveils an identity shaped by popular media and history, code switching and cultural inclusivity. The poems, songs, and myths in this long-awaited first book are as rooted in lyric as in innovation, in Black music as in macaronic satire. TWERK evokes paradox, humor, and vulnerability, and it offers myriad avenues fueled by language, idiom, and vernacular. This book asks only that we imagine America as it has always existed, an Americana beyond the English language.

"Here it is: a dope jam of dictions; a remixed, multicultural, polyphonic dance of vocabularies; a language of high stakes, hi-jinx, and hybridity. TWERK is subversive, vulnerable, and volatile. TwERK twists tongues. TwERK tweaks speech. Reading these amazing poems mostly makes me say, Wow! Open your ears to take this music in, open your mouth to say it out loud. And: Wow!"—Terrance Hayes

"Tweaking parallel languages, rebooting and putting them to (hard, hard) work, TWERK's non-stop shimmy-shimmy embarks on an animé-iigjag idio-lingual-lectical booty-roll and doesn't come down until the break of dawn. La Reina de Harlem responds to Lorca's Big-Apple-opolis heteroglossia with her own inimitable animations, incantations and ululations, twisting tongues so mellifluously that you don't even realize you've been dancing on Saturn with Sun Ra for hours and still could have begged for more. Welcome LaTasha Diggs: this is her many-splendored night out!"—Maria Damon

"From this time forward, TWERK, can refer to a collection of cultural coordinates of a radically transformed Americas. TWERK—is rare poetics, a vine enmeshed onyx slab of gypsum glyphs inscribed. Cut, swirly, and nervy, N. Diggs's fractal-linguistic urban chronicles deftly snip away at the lingering fears of a fugitive English's frisky explorations. In her first major work, N. Diggs doesn't so much 'find' culture as she conjures up the new emerging happy peoples herein. Five thousand updates—download now!"—Rodrigo Toscano

Writer, vocalist, and sound artist LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is the author of three chapbooks, which include Ichi- Ban and Ni-Ban (MOH Press), Manuel is destroying my bathroom (Belladonna*), and the album Television. Her work has been published in Rattapallax, Black Renaissance Noir, Nocturnes, FENCE, Ploughshares, The Black Scholar, P.M.S, LA Review, jubilat, Everything But the Burden, and Muck Works among others. Her interdisciplinary work has been featured at The Kitchen, Exit Art, MoMA, Recess Activities Inc, Brooklyn Museum, MoMA PS1, and The Whitney. As a vocalist, she has worked with the likes of Vernon Reid, Akilah Oliver, Mike Ladd, Butch Morris, Gabri Christa, Shelley Hirsch, Jason and Alicia Moran, Burnt Sugar, Edwin Torres, Elliot Sharp, Mendi + Keith Obadike, Bernard Lang, DJ Logic, Vijay Iyer, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Marc Cary, Towa Tei, and Guillermo E. Brown. She has received several scholarships, residencies, and fellowships; among them include Cave Canem, Harvestworks Digital Media Arts Center, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Eben Demarest Trust, Harlem Community Arts Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Laundromat Project, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Barbara Deming Memorial Grant for Women, Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, and Black Earth Institute. As an independent curator and artistic director, LaTasha has presented and directed literary/musical/theatrical events at Symphony Space, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, WBAI, The Schomburg Research Center for Black Culture, BAM Cafe, Dixon Place, and El Museo del Barrio. A native of Harlem, LaTasha and writer Greg Tate are the founders and editors of yoYO/SO4 Magazine.