American Herstory - Paperback

by Celeste Doaks (Author)

American Herstory by celeste doaks is a collection of ekphrastic poems around the portrait of Michelle Obama that hangs in the White House, interrogating the visual and cultural record of her years as First Lady. Through a prism of history, gender, and representation, doaks transforms public images into a layered investigation of power, visibility, and the cultural narrative of the United States.

Author Biography

celeste doaks is the author of Cornrows and Cornfields (2015) and editor of the poetry anthology Not Without Our Laughter (2017). Since the initial publication of American Herstory in 2019, poems from the collection have been featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Brooklyn Museum. She has been a university professor for over a decade and is a 2022 Yaddo fellow. Her work has appeared in multiple US and UK online and print publications including Ms., The Millions, Huffington Post, Chicago Quarterly Review, The Hopkins Review, and many others.