The 2017 National Book Awards finalists list has come out and among the twenty finalists is Wesleyan University Press’ Shane McCrae with his book, In the Language of My Captor, which came out this past March. In The Language of My Captor is a captivating must-read new book of poetry, breaking down socialized and elitist conceptions of grammar and calling out the United States’ racial tensions through McCrae’s own childhood as a half-white, half-black boy. Borrowing sociohistorical and cultural references to blackness and mixed race relations  in U.S. history, the book forces readers into the discomfort of listening to themselves and their ancestors speak.

You can read the official press release from Wesleyan Univeristy Press after the jump: