Mentor Text: Homegoing, AD

Kima Jones is a black writer, poet, and literary publicist from Harlem, New York. She also founded the Jack Jones literary Arts publicity firm. Her poem “Homegoing, AD” was published in a collection called “The Fire This Time”. Her poem is about the story of presumably an African American woman who is unknown to us, traveling back home to North Carolina for their grandfathers funeral. They drive there, talk about how things and the people have changed since they’ve all been gone, and then head out to the woods with their cousin to drink, smoke, and reminisce about their grandfather. At the end, it switches from less of a story format to more like a poem, and they run away from an alligator. The poem to me has a heavy feel to it, for example when talking about going home she says, “and we that closer to death with each mile”, and “the air so wet and thick of it, choking us”. This feeling continues on through the story, but there’s also some nostalgia. The narrator is returning back to their home, remembering about their childhood, seeing whats changed, it feels quite nostalgic, but there is still that darker feeling as you’re reading the poem. The loss of their grandfather weighs heavy, as they think of him in his last moments, and at the end in the woods being chased by a gator.