Graffiti

"To create this inaugural anthology from artist collective POC United, the editors of Graffiti gave the contributors a special challenge: to write in a way that centers neither "whiteness" nor "anti-whiteness" and that is not limited by their struggle, their oppression, or how their characters will be received by the white imagination. The results are joyous and mind-expanding. Through poetry, short stories, and essays, the works in Graffiti expose lives that move in unexpected ways, rendering characters who don't fit the cultural tropes we cling to. Graffiti shows what writers of color do when they are invited to scribble, scrawl, romanticize, and speculate without being politicized or exoticized." -- "Graffiti is the first installment in a themed, multi-genre anthology series called POC United. The aim of the POC United series is to foster literary spaces in which the work is drawn by forces other than the interests of the white imagination-interests that so often send writers of color down the path of centering oppression for exoticized consumption. In her introduction to the anthology, author and poet Elmaz Abinader says: "Graffiti hits like a playlist of street grinds, jigsaw