Blood, Skin, and Water is a complicated letter of love and lament to familial legacy and how it informs the physical and spiritual self. At its core, it’s a story of resilience through a Black, queer, and disabled lens. Despite loss, death, illness, and the violent experience of being Black and femme in a world that loves to hate–I am still here. My community is still here; and we deserve to cry, curse, love on each other, disappear into our heads, then celebrate when we find our way out. Blood, Skin, and Water is a testament to being–in spite of it all.

Praise for Blood, Skin, and Water

“Blood, Skin, and Water is a sharply observed debut with a bellyfull of emotion…They carefully pick out the sacred from the quotidian, hearing hymns even in a tub drain; they pay homage to their ancestors in the drawl of Black jazz poets, and the rhythmic acrylics of fellow Black girls. Above all, Blood, Skin, and Water realizes that while pain is passed down, we may still live loudly.” —Marie Ee, Writer and Director of Rasa Sayang

“Blood, Skin, and Water’s mediations are both intimate and political, never shying from naming the violence we endure publicly and privately. As an antidote, she asks us to stay with the grief, joy, boredom, pain, and love of our pasts and of what may be our certain futures. McDaniel’s poems invite us to magnify the minutiae of everyday struggles in the kitchen, the bedroom, or the lung and to see them for the cosmic wars that they are.” —Boz Deseo Garden, Author of The Nocturnal Letter: Blackness, Enjoyment, and the Slave(ry) of Discourse

“In Blood, Skin, and Water, McDaniel cements herself as a commanding and memorable poetic voice…She invites us to look not only inward but also at the communities we are a part of and how we might better love them. There is so much pain and so much life in Blood, Skin, and Water, and we are very lucky to be able to read it.” —Emma Parkinson, Book Production Editor