Concentrate

by Courtney Faye Taylor

Winner of the 2021 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, selected by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

In her virtuosic debut, Courtney Faye Taylor explores the under-told history of the murder of Latasha Harlins—a fifteen-year-old Black girl killed by a Korean shop owner, Soon Ja Du, after being falsely accused of shoplifting a bottle of orange juice. Harlins’s murder and the following trial, which resulted in no prison time for Du, were inciting incidents of the 1992 Los Angeles uprising, and came to exemplify the long-fraught relationship between Black and Asian American communities in the United States. Through a collage-like approach to collective history and storytelling, Taylor’s poems present a profound look into the insidious points at which violence originates against—and between—women of color.

Concentrate displays an astounding breadth of form and experimentation in found texts, micro-essays, and visual poems, merging worlds and bending time in order to interrogate inexorable encounters with American patriarchy and White supremacy manifested as sexual and racially charged violence. These poems demand absolute focus on Black womanhood’s relentless refusal to be unseen, even and especially when such luminosity exposes an exceptional vulnerability to harm and erasure. Taylor’s inventive, intimate book radically reconsiders the cost of memory, forging a path to a future rooted in solidarity and possibility. “Concentrate,” she writes. “We have decisions to make. Fire is that decision to make.”

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, African American, History

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2022

About the author

Courtney Faye Taylor is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Concentrate (Graywolf Press, 2022) which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize selected by Rachel Eliza Griffiths and was a finalist for the National Poetry Series.

Courtney earned her B.A. from Agnes Scott College and her MFA from the University of Michigan Helen Zell Writers’ Program where she received the Hopwood Prize in Poetry. She is also the winner of the 92Y Discovery Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize. The recipient of residencies and fellowships from Cave Canem and the Charlotte Street Foundation, her writing can be found in Kenyon Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Best New Poets, The New Republic and elsewhere.

As a mixed media visual artist, Courtney pairs photography and found materials with various poetic writing forms. Her visual poems and collages can be found in Poetry Magazine and on display in exhibitions.

Reviews

[el · Rating 5 out of 5]

i almost don't have words for this collection. i can't imagine what an undertaking this multimedia project was. brilliant beyond thought, worth 100 rereads, experiments with the senses—with sound and sight most of all—spans well-known and little known histories across time and space, forces a kind of keen-eyed attention + analysis that necessitates research independent of the book, plays with language in a way you wouldn't think possible, attends to grief/grieving (private + public) with a careful and incisive touch, visually stunning + complex, is just so so so so so so good. wow. no poetry collection i've read deserves the descriptor "documentarian" like this one.

some favorites:

I crept to mom ‘n’ pops where bells above doors snitched to mention my entrance. But I tolled them bells. I was toys to be bothered. I had made such toyish mistakes. In any Black sentence, you’d love nothing more than to had made / no mistake.

—

This is how we commemorate—graffiti on the scalps of trains, the lower waists of offices, sharpies to a bathroom stall, twigs ushered through newborn concrete. All of it, our way of reclaiming the narrative of a place, leaving a mark that costs the state money to eradicate.

—

A child may ask, “Who?” The adults will answer however they do, but their answers will irritate history.

—

I am the only trick alive / and with eyes who likes outgrown / acrylics and who likes it when / wind blows a water fountain’s show / onto a sidewalk in a park the size / of Paradise. I think, righteous confetti.

—

what smoke needed / was consequence;~ what it needed / was harm back

[Folasade · Rating 4 out of 5]

very into this prose poetry genre, the way this text was creatively formatted, the author’s vulnerability in sharing her inner dialogue, and integrity in her efforts to honor the life of Latasha Harlins.

[Kayla · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am speechless after finishing this, and giving it anything less than 5 stars feels disgraceful.

Just…wow. I took my time reading this book of poems and now that I’m finished with it, I see why. I feel why. This is not a book of poetry that I read; it is one I heard and felt as I turned every page.

This was an astonishing work of visual art and prose poetry, and found poetry and lyrical verse, and so much more. The blending of it all was the perfect mix for this book, this topic, and Courtney’s voice as a poet.

It is a great honor that I will be introducing Courtney at a Georgia Poetry Circuit reading in April. This is remarkable and more than deserving of all its praise.

[angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

this elegy to latasha harlins is an evocative look at remembering the existences, realities and possibilities of black girls, especially those taken too soon.

[Tay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Picked this book because I love the color and I’m so glad I bought it. This was such a beautiful brilliant book of poetry I will definitely revisit it.

[Amy]

I heard Courtney Faye Taylor on an AWP panel and I was already blown away by the work, thought and depth in her writing process. Cannot wait to read this.

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

A challenging work, but one that will knock the wind out of you. Truly inventive and unique in its execution, the layers of reference and history and memory create a moving portrait not only of Latasha Harlins, whose life and loss resonate throughout, but of larger legacies of grief and harm. I haven’t read anything like this before and it is absolutely worth exploring.

[Shelby · Rating 5 out of 5]

You don’t just read this book; you feel it.

[Karena Bakas · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful work honoring Latasha Harlins and Black women in general. Also a thought provoking and sobering exploration of how Black American and Asian American identities have been warped by white supremacy into violent opposition. And also a heart breaking documentation of the labor of unearthing and paying respect to the lost when they are considered worthless by society.

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

Forgot to review this .

I read this for my creative writing poetry workshop last year and it was wildly interesting! Courtney is extremely talented at poetry and while some of her poems are mad confusing at first, if you give them a chance, you’ll be surprised at just how powerful they really are. I’ve modeled some of my own poetry after her and I just can’t seem to measure up to her!

[Laura Sackton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Magnificent.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was book 6 of my Rumpus poetry bookclub subscription. I'm a lil behind in my Rumpus poetry reading (I read 1-5, then I read 8, so 6-7 were here but waitin' on me.)

(I did not actually read this book for three entire months. I started and restarted it a few different times during that time period and finally really read the whole thing in March.)

This book was intense and challenging and really really worth the read. Also deeply deeply sad and upsetting. Dear America, oh my god, you have sucked for such a long time, and yet somehow you just continue to deeply deeply suck.

Things that are amazing about this book:
--a fierce reckoning with the effects of white supremacy / privilege on Black lives.
--an honoring of Latasha Hawkins, a 15 year old shot in LA in 1991 by a Korean grocery store shopkeeper.
--an examination specifically of relations/relationships between Blacks and Asians and how despite both facing in some cases very similar types of racism, it is more common to see schism there than connection.
--the examination of what has helped us avoid certain fates and what yet makes certain fates still inevitable.
--this poet's ability to zoom in (microcosm) and zoom out (macrocosm); her ability to make Latasha's life, or her own life, both personal and specific, as well as being an example of so many of the young Black girl lives out there being lived.
--this poet's ability to tie together recent events with deep histories, some of which I had never read about before (in both areas).

Things that made this book a challenging read:
--One of the things that gave me trouble getting started is the book is not really broken into individual poems. It has seven sections, but each section just sort of flows all the way through. A lot of this is written more as, I would say, prose snippets, rather than what your expectation of "a poem" might be.
--The poet experiments with a huge range of ways to present her ideas: there are photos, mixed-media collage pieces, store reviews, conversations, lyrics, timelines, etc. Some of these I found more effective than others; some I just found easier to parse than others. I actually really really loved the juxtaposition timelines although the one on pg 55 that intermixes white text and gray text was a real challenge to read (visually). This reminded me of Krista Franklin's book "Too Much Midnight" where you are reading poems interspersed with mixed media collage art, and essays.
--It's often not clear who's talking or whose view is being presented. Not all quotes/conversations are attributed. Sometimes it feels like the author presenting herself personally as "I", sometimes it seems like it's her but separated, almost as "reporter" or "outside," sometimes it seems clear that it's someone else, but who? Sometimes it's just not really clear. I think that's part of the point, but it IS a challenge. With the store reviews, for example, I was left wondering: Did she write these? Are they "fiction"? Did she write these after going to these places? Are these written by other people and she found them online? Are they an amalgamation of types of reviews she's seen?

Here is a quote I can't let go of. A little background first: After Latasha's murder, some people tried to set fire to the store where it happened. But Black residents living in a motel nearby, spent all night putting out the fire, with garbage bags of water, because if they hadn't, it would have also burned down their home.

"To save their own lives, they had to save this monument of brutality. Our survive, inextricable from the structures that threaten it."

[Francesca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concentrate is one of the few selections of poetry I’ve read that I felt knocked me flat. Primarily an elegy to Latasha Harlins, it is heavily meditative and urges, rather, demands, inner dialogue. I finished it and immediately wanted to pick it up and read it again because I felt that it had gone both too slow and too fast, that it was so filled with emotion that I hadn’t caught every one, that it had so many intense reflections that I couldn’t hold them all in without examining them again. This is intentional, and why this collection stands out. Courtney Faye Taylor demands of us:
“Concentrate. We have decisions to make.”

She does this and yet her work blurs in and out of several media forms; it is personal in one instant, historically factual in another, flooded with grave and grim humor on the next page. She unnerves her reader and makes it impossible to fully concentrate. This is part of the brilliance of her writing as it focuses on the deep trauma of racism as it uniquely and tragically effects black women and girls. This goes along with her focus on John Henryism, or the constant psychic toll of racism and its secondary life and physical effects.

The closing of the book concerned the utterly dehumanizing and profit driven desecration of Harlin and those laid to rest in the cemetery she was buried in. With full anguish, I wept at the book’s closing.

“A thin obsidian life is heaving
On a time limit you’ve set.”

Concentrate. A plea, a demand…outstanding poetry as witness.

[Honey · Rating 5 out of 5]

the wonders of intention in creation. what a beautiful and harrowing collection.

"other colors killing us like white men now?"

"in the riots, the unthinkable got thought of / / then done."

"I just went in there for hair and noticed I was being watched thru mirrors in corners tho I go nowhere lookin broke (I got jobS) but since I'm black this female just KNEW I was gonna steal something ... I asked this heifer pointblank what her issue was and she gon say some shit like "safety" I was hot yall I said "I don't need to take shit from here I got jobs PLURAL okay and once the hood gets wind of your lil attitude this hairstore gon go dark thru the windows forever, baby!"

should be considered that black women's dreams continue to put a run in the tights of colonial rule. in war, these women are taken into theaters, tanks, and pueblos, and in these places they are harmed to harm their countries. black women are a point that's made.

but whiteness is intrinsic to all transactions in this country. avoiding white power means passing away.

resistance antagonizes immunity, makes us prone to roadrunner pulse. epidemiologist Sherman a James calls this "John henryism" theorizing that the tireless effort required to combat racial injustice has a direct correlation to the prevelance of hypertension in Black communities.

anti-erase - which is the work of resistance

my full name is my mother's sole crack at poetry and here I am, privileged to haul it like a tax bracket or a satchel of proof

[Lauren Whitlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I was looking for Latasha Harlins.”

“Who?”

—

This collection deserves so much more recognition. Concentrate is full of important commentary on racism, feminism, toxic masculinity, and memory. As someone who had sadly never even heard of Latasha Harlins before reading, I found Courtney Faye Taylor’s deeply personal exploration of all of the above incredibly illuminating, insightful, and powerful. Not to mention very well-written and composed!

—

Concentrate is a powerful collection of poetry and multimedia representing personal, secondhand, and shared experiences. Through these forms, Courtney Faye Taylor explores the charged racism of America’s recent history and how it continues to infect the present (particularly the present lives of Black American women).

Concentrate primarily focuses on honoring and exploring the life and death of Latasha Harlins, a 15 year old Black girl who was shot by a Korean American shopkeeper (a woman) in South Central, LA in 1991. It then ties that past narrative into how Harlins continues to be honored (and forgotten) and the similarities that Harlins’ life and death continue to share with Taylor’s experience of the present.

[Carla · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Latasha Lavon Harlins, ma’am. Born Capricorn, born cornered. Known for walking in an Empire, and never walking out. This horror was first told to me when I entered my body, so I settle in unsettling skin. I book a room inside her absence. A room with no light and all lore but I’ve entered, a fool, to find her. I’ve entered, like Alice walker in Eatonville for Zora Neale, coming to raise her, name her saint. Just like that, I’ve entered LA to anti-erase, which is a work of resistance. The absent can only live in memory. As the saying goes, if you disremember us, you kill us, and I’m here to resist a second dying. I need you to know this was Latasha’s school, and now her name is a wound in its sidewalk.”

Concentrate is a multi-genre text: poetry, prose, collage, auto/biography, documentary, photographs, aphoristic. This collection wants to burst out of the confines of text. The life and death of Latasha Harlins is the center story where the author investigates what is means to be a black girl/woman in America. It’s an engaging text that I couldn’t put down.

[Venneh · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an ARC that Graywolf provides to donors as part of its Galley Club. I read this on my recent flight to NYC in the space of an hour or so. This is a pretty fantastic first collection, focusing on the death of Latasha Harlins, who was shot and killed over a false accusation of shoplifting, and whose death and lack of charges for the Korean American store owner were part of the inciting incidents of the '92 LA riots. This is a fantastic collection, using collage, reviews of businesses in LA, micro essays and investigations into Latasha's lie and places honoring her, and her own experiences of receiving the talk about existing as a black kid all woven together in a fantastic, experimental form. This entire collection is a standout, but honestly, my favorite was the opening section, where she juxtaposes her experience receiving the talk from her aunt, meanings of the word concentrate, and a lot of the collage work. There's also a fantastic poem about the instance of blackface in K-Pop and in an instance of ganguro art. Pick this up when it comes out, you're in for a hell of a treat.

[SerenaBeReading · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a very very tough read but I learned more about Latasha Harlins than I have in the last thirty something years. I had no idea her mother had been killed prior to her untimely death which makes everything all the more sad. Courtney Faye Taylor has such a way with words. I can't lie, I ended this book feeling so hopeless/depressed because even in death Latasha couldn't get peace. Even in death.

[S P · Rating 4 out of 5]

'I didn't plan on talking. I didn't wanna bother nobody, but there's a sudden volume in my relief. So I seek that woman at the entrance. I ask if there are any tributes or plaques or mentions of Latasha at all inside the school.

When Latasha's name leaves my mouth, the woman's face presents the problem. It's the look an accidental wound gives its random, careless maker. I feel it before she says it—a grave has entered our interaction.

"Who?"'

(p73)

[Melissa Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book absolutely blew me away. I can't wait to share it with my students, many of whom have fixed ideas about what poetry is. With this book I can show them that poetry is so much bigger than they might have imagined. It can contain dialogue, visual art, Yelp reviews. It can be an artifact, historical preservation, pop culture critique. I really loved this book. It's necessary and important and I learned a lot from it.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not a huge poetry reader, but found this to be a gripping book that meaningfully traced the life and unjust killing of Latasha Harlins, as well as Harlins's legacy in the L.A. riots and present-day racial justice conversations.

Taylor's sense of connection to the shooting of Latasha Harlins—despite a self-recognized distance between herself and Latasha—struck me in particular, especially as she followed Latasha's life in California, and fought to find the place she was buried. As Taylor shows, bearing witness and fighting for justice requires all voices, and there is so much value in overcoming geographical or other forms of distance in pursuit of solidarity.

Poems on Afro-Asian interaction and racialization in the United States also seamlessly brought Taylor's experiences traveling Los Angeles into a broader conversation on interracial allyship. This was a very worthwhile read, and its style reminded me of "Citizen: An American Lyric" by Claudia Rankine, another meaningful poetry/ essay collection on anti-Blackness and racial justice.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been thinking about how to make difficult topics accessible without sacrificing complexity. Taylor does that here, better than most writers I've seen. She provides many points of entry into a challenging story. And it might surprise you which ones resonate the most. Like I found myself almost brought to tears by a timeline. As a content warning, the book does talk about rape which is not obvious from the description.

[Susan Eubank · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is what we did at the Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion on February 26, 2025.

Icebreaker: Tell a story about getting your hair worked on.
Since this is a poetry book, each person picked out 2 or 3 poems they wanted to read to the group. Since this is not a conventional poetry book, the group also came with questions to explore with the group.

[Clover O'Mordha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anything less than 5 stars is unacceptable for how well put together and thought out this collection was. There are a lot of visual poems and rather than distracting the reader, they add to and enhance the overall narrative.

The explorations of white supremacy and manufactured hatred are so well done that I'm speechless. It's going straight to the re-read pile!!

[Katherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

beautiful collection experimental and archival really exploring murdered of latasha harlan’s during la black and korean uprising 1992 i think super telling to think ab anti blackness within as/am community

[Stephanie Dargusch Borders · Rating 5 out of 5]

This tribute poem to Latasha Harlins—a Black girl killed in LA in the 90s after being suspected of shoplifting an orange juice—was so stunningly done. Every element was so well done; I recommend everyone read this.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Graywolf Galley Club for the ARC.

[Cristina Sherer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rich in tragedy, reflection, and resistance. Read it. Feel it. Read it again.

[Kristen Luppino · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving, chilling, powerful, beautiful. Highly recommend if you are moved by poetry.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn. What a brilliant work of the archive, against erasure.