In Sister Strength, Adriann Toombs Bautista has penned a powerful full-length collection that succeeds in uplifting “Black girl magic and/ Brown woman courage.” She expertly interweaves the she/her/we/me of her subtitle to give testimony to the personal and collective experiences of womanhood. Through her expansive and compassionate heart, she gives voice to the stories of humanity summed up perfectly in the After Word by Bautista’s mentor, Elijah B. Pringle III, “This assemblage is for sisters, lovers of sisters, lovers of self, all are beneficiaries of this stunning accomplishment.”
Bautista’s inimitable capacity for empathy shines mightily through the poem, “The Flight of Her.” She observes a woman “sitting there full of trepidation and dissention.” In her capacity for kindness, the speaker wants to show the “sienna kissed sister” that she is loved, that she is beautiful in a world that can often make women feel unvalued and worthless. In her final, gorgeous stanza, Bautista writes,
I wanted to see her soar
Gliding across the universe without hesitation
Then I wanted to fall into V-formation
And fly right alongside her.
In the foreword to this collection, poet Lynn Blue aka Lady Blue writes that Bautista’s “acceptance of people ‘as is’ remains phenomenal and is manifested in the depths of her writings.” Nowhere is this proven more strongly than in the poem, “The Second Wait.” The speaker finds herself among “a sea of pink gowns” where all have different backgrounds, careers, ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations, yet “Our breast telling a story/ the equalizer.” This poem celebrates the bonds between women and that the sharing of stories can lead to new understands and truths among “Strangers but familiar.”
Bautista’s empathy extends to “every mother who has lost a child to violence” in “My Sister’s Pain.” The speaker admits that the “reality is unfamiliar to me.” Yet, through searing imagery and precise diction, she creates a poetic space for these mothers exemplified in the stanza:
I see my sister’s pain
It is in the arch of her back
As she reaches for a can from the cupboard
Slowly distending as if trying to touch heaven
Where he now lives.
She develops the metaphor of grief until it becomes a “double knitted shawl” that the mother “[hopes] to stretch its power/ [and snap] it into oblivion.” In the heartbreaking final stanza, the speaker zooms out from this intense individual experience into a larger political one with the lines “And a nation cries/ But the sound of her tears will/ Soon be forgotten.”
Bautista celebrates famous Black women and elders in this book including Philadelphia Poet Laureates, Trapeta Mayson and Yolanda Wisher; Maya Angelou, and Nina Simone. In “On Becoming,” Bautista recollects her experience listing to Michelle Obama speak and in doing so comes to an epiphany that perfectly embodies the spirt of this collection. She begins the poem with the lines, “She had much to say/ Yet when she began to speak/ I could not hear her voice or my own.” She describes Obama and the sincerity of her words, but still hears neither Obama’s voice or her own until she realizes
The roads I have traveled
That led to this me…
Yet the same sense of ‘becoming’
I marveled at the symmetry
Then I understood why
I could not hear her voice
Or my own.
The bonds formed between the women in this book and between Bautista and the reader are akin to covalent bonds, and may even be stronger. Reading this collection, I reveled in Bautista’s search for and finding of human connection in a world that often finds ways to separate and compartmentalize people. Also in the foreword to this vital book, Lady Blue writes, “You will…experience…her desire for true sisterhood among women.” You will also experience the she/her/we/me of Bautista’s vision. Reading this collection, you will be empowered, soothed, and inspired. Sister Strength is a magical book and a welcomely unexpected balm.
Sean Hanrahan is a Philadelphian poet originally hailing from Dale City, Virginia. He is the author of the full-length collection Safer Behind Popcorn (2019 Cajun Mutt Press) and the chapbooks Hardened Eyes on the Scan (2018 Moonstone Press) and Gay Cake (2020 Toho). His work has also been included in several anthologies, including Moonstone Featured Poets, Queer Around the World, and Stonewall’s Legacy, and several journals, including Impossible Archetype, Mobius, Peculiar, Poetica Review, and Voicemail Poems. He has taught classes titled A Chapbook in 49 Days and Ekphrastic Poetry and hosted poetry events throughout Philadelphia.