Taylor Johnson’s ‘Inheritance’ Forces Intersectional Contemplation of Race, Gender, and Capitalism

Taylor Johnson’s “Inheritance” is a collection of their feelings and experiences regarding gender, sex and sexuality, and race. The book is the first from the D.C. native, though some of the poems within it have appeared in places such as The Baffler, Indiana Review, Scalawag, and the Paris Review.

Succinct and poignant, Johnson’s poems rarely surpass one page. The pages are filled with extra spaces and line breaks that create a digestible, soft image for the eyes. Blank pages also frequently punctuate “Inheritance,” making readers realize how rarely they see so much of the whiteness in the pages of a book. The brevity of the content combined with all of the empty spaces on the pages makes it seem like something is being withheld from readers, as though Johnson has a secret they do not wish to share or that they know something the audience can never be privy to.

Johnson deftly switches between different styles, sometimes writing closer to traditional prose, other times connecting fragments of words, spaces, and punctuation to create looser, unstructured smatterings of text. Though Johnson’s poems vary from one to the other stylistically, they all tend to revolve around the complementary subjects of gender, race, love, sex, and sexuality.

The overall tone of “Inheritance” hovers somewhere between yearning and sadness — Johnson dreams of a commerce-less, love-filled future while lamenting the struggles they have faced in the past and continue to face in the present day. Dancing between light colloquialisms and dense formalities, Johnson captures the omnipresent dualities of their existence, whether they be racial, gendered, or otherwise. Tales of incarceration and starvation rattle readers, especially in how they so easily and naturally mingle with stories of love and holding hands on the bus that a reader can take comfort in.

Culture makes its way into “Inheritance” with references to musicians, books of the Bible, and other poets. This invites readers into their world by providing context they can relate to, allowing them to more deeply emphasize with Johnson’s point of view. Johnson pays homage to those who have inspired them and criticizes societal infrastructures and traditions that in their mind, are needless.

What sets “Inheritance” apart the most is the way it references capitalism as a part of (or rather, a rejection of) Johnson’s identity. Lines about dancing at clubs and gender passing are sprinkled with wishes of burning dollar bills and condemnations of commerce. In between descriptions of poorly lit rooms are descriptions of America’s fatal love affair with economy and private property. Capitalism is featured as prevalently in Johnson’s “Inheritance” as their Blackness and transness, and Johnson masterfully draws connections between these ideas that are often compartmentalized to show their intersectional implications. This adds dimension to the work, and forces readers to engage with questions of identity while bearing the lens of capitalism in mind. Even readers who do not identify in the same ways of Johnson will have experience with capitalist systems, thus allowing them to engage with the work more wholly.

“Inheritance” rings true because in its structures, subjects, and spirit it mimics the complexities of life — each poem works to capture life’s contradictions, reconciliations, and intersections; each choice Johnson makes is in service of this. Johnson effectively commands attention with their use of language, cultural invocations, and diction, while the length of the book and the poems within it often leave a reader wanting more.

—Staff writer Ajibabi O. Oloko can be reached at ajibabi.oloko@thecrimson.com.