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Before our mothers spent Saturdays scrubbing stovetops to R&B classics they were girls children of Detroit, Brooklyn, Newark, and other Black cities across the country. It’s the desires and identities of those adolescents author Jasmine Mans explores in her second book of poetry, Black Girl Call Home. “Tell me who my mother was before she was my mother,” Mans says, quoting her work. “I think that’s a very important thing. Often we see these matriarchs and we never consider that.” Mans’ words cloak those the world dismisses as “strong Black women,” in much-needed empathy. “All of those women, from my mother to my grandmother, to Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison, we revere these people, but it’s important to bring them back to this most simple form: they are women,” Mans says. “They bleed, they got their periods, they cried, men left them.” ....