The Fight

Winner of the 2022 Trio Award, Jennifer Manthey's The Fight showcases Manthey's experience with adoption, alongside the actions of Varina Davis, history's only First Lady of the Confederate States, to present readers with the complexity of adoption, especially in the case of white mothers with Black children. Her poetry is intimate, tender, and full of potency, navigating "truth...difficult as history," revealing the "Hate hidden everywhere," and asking readers to question what it means to be white in "a country not built to love [her] son." Manthey's power lies in her ability to speak to her readers' hearts while challenging their understanding of ongoing racial inequity. The Fight captures the wealth of collective guilt and discomfort many white Americans are currently wrestling with, the impact that adoption has on the family as a whole, and the ongoing effects of "white saviorism" in American society.