RaveTimeA riveting testimony to everyday blackness ... There is no distinct separation between the writer and her elegy. Parker is uncompromising with her interior life, and between stanzas puts it fully on display. She invites us into her bedroom and therapy sessions. We are left to experience the magnitude of the violated black body: Every day it is bitten with new guilt. It is a moving window into her day-to-day existence, a tenacious black woman rejecting oppressive standards of beauty in favor of profound self-acceptance ... Parker’s boldness and vulnerability are rewarded within the verse, which offers an inquiry of black genius ... Magical Negro’s soft radiance permeates the soul, inspiring a disquieting melancholy. It is wry and atmospheric, an epic work of aural pleasures and personifications that demands to be read–both as an account of a private life and as searing political protest.
