The Performance is a Ceremony: On LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs’ Village

The Performance is a Ceremony: On LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs’ Village Coffee House Press, 2023 Motherhood has never been a simple matter, despite whatever societal messaging has tried to convince us through trends and lies. Extend that inherent complexity to childhood, particularly daughterhood, as well: our unspoken duties as children of women often amount to a heavy, life-long psychological burden. In LaTasha Diggs’ Village, poems relate the long-term impact of maternal shortcomings or limitations, fraught with shame, through experimentation with forms such as an artist’s statement, a last will & testament’s instructions for funeral arrangements, a proposal for a city monument, a performance script, map-making, and certainly more. Shame enters the room when someone we dearly love has disappointed us, sometimes over the course of decades, and it sits on our chest. Here,…