White Chick

How does self-doubt age? What is the archetype of white femininity and who is safe from it? Nancy Keating probes these questions in White Chick with torrential wit and insight and, sometimes, with a hurt disguised as practiced nonchalance. This is a book about what it means to disappear, to be deemed boring or irrelevant, but also, to do the difficult work white writers often skirt, which is to explicitly say what whiteness promises and also, what it buries. The poems are addictive to read for their wordplay, sonic qualities, and humorous declarations. There are times when the speaker is so casual in addressing the difficult intersections of race, gender, and positionality that I feel an immediate discomfort, but upon further analysis, I am struck by the deep intelligence exhibited in the poet’s unpretentious handling of such serious matters. The result is a collection that feels more believable and less rehearsed. By opening her poems with lines such as “Not to get all Debbie Downer on this” or “The way men once used to say / they read Playboy for the articles / that’s how I read the J. Peterman catalog,” Keating makes plain her self-deprecating habits. At the same time, the book expertly critiques how and why women do this even as they age. As the poet puts it in “Erasure”: “After all those years of silencing a woman does it to herself.” At a moment when poetry is so invested in youthful prodigy culture, this book, in which Keating asks us to consider how sexism and ageism intersect, hit me hard. There are critiques here worthy of a wide readership.