“Kevin Powell returns with a poetic time capsule written with love in honor of his mother’s evolution. Powell investigates the nature of our country’s oppression through the generational wounds survived and passed on. These poems are a testament to the healing work of Kevin Powell, as they revel in the power of forgiveness, abundance, and lineage.” — Mahogany L. Browne, Lincoln Center’s Inaugural Poet-in-Residence; author of Vinyl Moon

As a charismatic speaker, leader, and a very good writer, Kevin Powell has the courage… to be fully human, and this will bring the deepest revolution of all. —Gloria Steinem

[Powell is] a mighty wind of fresh air. —Dr. Michael Eric Dyson

When you consider the intelligence and breadth of Kevin Powell’s writing and activism, you come to the conclusion that there may be no better spokesperson and representative for a generation that has too long been counted out. —asha bandele

After 14 books, dozens of high-profile magazine covers, and hundreds of articles, essays, blogs, and poems published in a wide range of outlets since the 1990s, with Grocery Shopping with My Mother, Kevin Powell returns fully to his great love of verse in a major way with this, his third volume of poetry.

The collection is 32 poems divided into two sections, deep dives, all, into his complicated relationship with his mom, love in all forms, manhood in the shadows of #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and our unstable times. Vivid, colorful, provocative, emotionally raw, it is a poetry book grounded in the literary traditions of Langston Hughes and Dylan Thomas, as well as the blues songs of voices as unique as Billie Holiday and Amy Winehouse. But there is hope, too, in Kevin’s poetry, and a vision of what is, and what he wants our world to be.