The Venus Hottentot

“The Dirt-Eaters” by Elizabeth Alexander (2001)

Like “The Venus Hottentot,” this poem from Antebellum Dream Book (2001) is more experimental in structure. In this poem, Alexander considers how Black Americans’ traditions are used by others to describe their culture as primitive while connecting it to her own family’s personal history.

“Early Cinema” by Elizabeth Alexander (2001)

When compared to “The Venus Hottentot,” this poem is more conventionally structured, but the two poems share thematic interests in the experiences of Black women and girls. In this poem, also from Antebellum Dream Book, Alexander creates an ambiguous morality tale that describes a group of young Black girls attempting to enter a whites-only movie theater by “passing,” so that they can see the movie The Sheik, starring the white Italian American Rudolph Valentino, who is in turn portraying a North African sheik. The poem is generally critical of defining race by visual markers, but the moral of the poem is more ambiguous.

“Phenomenal Woman” by Maya Angelou (1978)

Both Angelou and Alexander wrote extensively on Black women’s experiences. Angelou works similarly to Alexander to reclaim the Black female body, celebrating it in this well-known and influential poem.

“homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton (1980)

Clifton often worked with Alexander, and they mutually admired the other. Upon Clifton’s death, Alexander memorialized her in The New Yorker. Like “The Venus Hottentot,” this poem focuses on the parts of a Black woman’s body often used to indicate and objectify her Blackness and Otherness. Clifton ultimately celebrates her Black body.

“kitchenette building” by Gwendolyn Brooks (1963)

Alexander has published much scholarship on Brooks’s work. Alexander read this poem at the rehearsal for Obama’s inauguration. Brooks focuses on the small cooking area of Bronzeville, Chicago apartments to remark upon the everyday experiences of Black people that make hope difficult.