Heart-Turned-Inside-Out: Poems

An intimate collaboration between mother and son, bringing together poems by Cheryl Johnson-Odim and drawings by her son, the acclaimed American artist Rashid Johnson.

Poems by Cheryl Johnson-Odim, Rashid Johnson's mother, are accompanied here by a selection of Johnson's drawings and a far-ranging conversation between mother and son.

The book is based on an updated version of Johnson-Odim's Other Women Before Me-first published in 1985, the year Rashid turned eight years old. In 2022, Johnson presented the stapled pamphlet-along with titles by the likes of Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Claudia Rankine and Sylvia Plath-in a reading area accompanying his exhibition 'Sodade' at Hauser & Wirth Menorca, where the artwork featured on the cover of this publication was also on view.