Good Dress
Poetry
Synthetic audio, Automated braille
Summary
Winner of the Lambda Award for Bisexual PoetryLonglisted for the 2025 Maya Angelou Book Award&“A once-in-a-generation debut.&”―Angel Nafis&“This self-assured, dazzling debut has a story to tell.&”―Aricka ForemanFollowing the tradition of Nikky Finney, Krista Franklin, and Morgan Parker, Brittany Rogers&’s Good… Dress documents the extravagant beauty and audacity of Black Detroit, Black womanhood, community, class, luxury, materialism, and matrilineage. A nontraditional coming of age, this collection witnesses a speaker coming into her own autonomy and selfhood as a young adult, reflecting on formative experiences. With care and incandescent energy, the poems engage with memory, time, interiority, and community. They also nudge tenderly toward curiosity: What does it mean to belong to a person, to a city? Can intimacy and romance be found outside the heteronormative confines of partnership? And in what ways can the pursuit of pleasure be an anchor that returns us to ourselves?