TENDER HEADED
Akashic Books, 2023
Winner of the National Poetry Series
The Millions | Must-Read Poetry Collection
Publishers Weekly | Most Notable Books for Fall/Winter 2023
The Root | Books by Black Authors We Can’t Wait to Read in December 2023
Chicago Review of Books | Must-Read Books of December 2023
Library Journal | What to Read in 2023
The irony of transformation often is that we mistake it to have occurred long before it does. Tender Headed takes its time in asserting the realization that growth remains ever ahead of you. Examining the themes of Black identity, accountability, and narration, we encounter a series of revealing snapshots into the role language plays in chiseling possibility and its rigid command of depiction. Olatunde Osinaike’s startling debut sorts through the many-minded masks behind Black masculinity. At its center lies an inquiry about the puzzling nature of relationships, how ceaseless wonder can be in its challenge of a truth. In the name of music and self-identity, the speaker weaves their way through fault and how it amends Black life in America. Earnest and sharp, there is a beauty in seeing a poet not shy away from both the melancholy and resolve of rescripting their path while cherishing their steps and missteps along the way.
Praise
“ .. a debut using incantatory language to probe Black masculinity” (New York Times Book Review)
“ .. insightful verses that point the way toward hope” (Publishers Weekly)
“.. refuses to be contained by any one description or emotion” (Chicago Review of Books)
“.. unpacks ideas of masculinity with playful musicality” (Booklist)
“.. introspective and precise in its critical eye” (The Millions)
“In Olatunde Osinaike’s Tender Headed, we find a contemplative, earnest young man seriously engaged with inherited notions of masculinity and “Blackness,” one who examines the problems, perils, and pleasures of each, and means to make sense of it all. This alone would make Osinaike’s debut collection a worthwhile read, but what sets it apart from most of what passes for socially engaged “poetry” nowadays is that Osinaike is not relying on The Project to do the heavy lifting. Rather, he is writing actual poems. Inventive, musical, and surprising poems.”
— John Murillo, author of Kontemporary Amerikan Poetry, Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award winner
“Osinaike is an oracle. These poems ask us to ‘pivot [our] necks to scan what has been done,’ then fix our eyes ahead on a Black coming-of-age, a Black coming-of-risk. . . Tender Headed annihilates the lie of a singular Black male identity.”
— Courtney Faye Taylor, author of Concentrate, Cave Canem Prize winner
“It is clear that there is a longing for answers that will not come easy, birthed from questions many writers wouldn’t have the fortification to ask. Osinaike’s confidence in the movement between styles, but the vulnerability in the lens he allows us to view the world through makes for a complicated negotiation between the brick/mortar of language and serenity of his voice.”
— William Evans, author of We Inherit What the Fires Left and Still Can’t Do My Daughter’s Hair
“Tender Headed is a tour de force exploration, to be sure, of black vulnerability — with its etymological roots in how we wear our wounds — but also, critically, a certain vision of black overcoming and abundance. Throughout this collection, we are not only surviving, but celebrating. We are irreducibly alive.”
— Joshua Bennett, author of Owed and The Sobbing School, National Poetry Series winner
“. . . from the barbershop to the gas station to grandma’s house, through praise and parables, spells and invention, Tender Headed challenges and captivates. It blooms beyond the page, strong in all its tenderness."
— Diannely Antigua, author of Ugly Music, Whiting Award winner
“Tender Headed is a simmering and sensitive offering from a poet of great promise. These poems sing of a writer seeking to make sense of the masculinity we’ve been handed from a sick society.”
— Nate Marshall, author of Finna and Wild Hundreds, Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize winner