Mood Indigo

Author: Jeanne Heuving

Publisher: selva oscura press (2020)

"The score is the written—a list of appropriated sources, the notes, is listed—and Jeanne Heuving plays upon, plays under, her instrument, the pen with which she begins, dragging it across the page. Weaving together real and speculative histories of plants, dyes, and papyrus, she creates a loose tapestry of septets that accumulate into ruminations on the network of histories binding transatlantic seafaring, trade, colonialism, agriculture, and slavery. Mood Indigo reminds us that beauty and cruelty, human ingenuity and human barbarity, are inextricably linked. We love the aboveground seen: Mood Indigo asks us to consider those invisible roots beneath the field."

–Tyrone Williams