Get Funky, Get Swoll explores, demonstrates, and indicts the multifaceted and multifarious ways white supremacy, white culture, and, in very specific instances white people, have had a profound and tragic impact on the human experience of those people known as Black.
The collection's opening examines intimate racism--the kind that exists between friends and friend groups and lovers; the kind which does not holler or thump or come crashing into the heart but does so quietly, stealthily, inflicting grave harm. The book's latter half comprises a series of love poems to Black people, and specifically to Black women--a Black female muse and the ethereal, transcendental, metaphysical Black Female. These poems serve as a countermeasure to the insidious impact of a society that pushes the simultaneous endeavor of self-hate while offering its own pale flesh as a refuge.
Get Funky, Get Swoll makes complex once again the so-called Black experience, which is to say, the human experience. Akhim Yuseff Cabéy's collection functions not only as a reminder of the tragic impact of white supremacy on the hearts and minds and souls of Black people, but as a signpost: more danger is headed our way, and we must hold on to the spirit we have left.
