Sundress Reads: This is how they teach you how to want it…The Slaughter

Lee guides readers toward recognition of the violent, addicting natures of the relationships and thought systems that ‘kill us’ or force us to surrender pieces of ourselves. In “This is how they teach you to want it…” Sheena urges us readers to challenge our roles in patriarchy, faith, and liberation, and to consider the levels of agency we have within our lives and others. Especially since a lot of us have no choice but to do so and find safety. This line from the title poem exemplifies this point: “The way you will shut your own eyes, cover them. Cover your own ears. Fold in on yourself. The quiet within the folding mimics mama’s womb”(Lee 17).

The key question here is: What are YOU willing to do, and what evil are you willing to commit? What part of yourself are you willing to betray? And are you courageous enough to switch paths? In the poem “About Prey, the Hunted, the Feral,” Lee insists that the reader knows where they stand and that even the worst deniers cannot disown their true belief. She asks in very few words, “What is the likelihood that you know where you stand?” This line is so powerful because the author already knows the answer. By the end of the book, Lee asks us how much more can we take, giving every pound of proverbial flesh to our murderers, our oppressors.

Lee uses very strong language to convey themes of violence, patriarchy, sex, faith, and the erasure of black and brown people. How They Teach You reads as a condensed demonstration of unspoken and unbearable pain, but one that is exhausted and sick of being hunted. This kind of pain that transcends the body and seeps into the fabric of the world around us, persisting like a permanent stain.

First, Lee split the book into three parts to convey the key components and consequences of what she calls “The Slaughter.” The first handful of poems in this book are derivatives of the title, meant to break each part of the polarizing statement: “This is how they teach you to want it.” This is to say that the oppression of the most vulnerable groups gets so bad that they are inevitably taught and beaten into wanting it. Antagonized, faith, and loved- bombed into the compliance of their literal and figurative deaths, in they teach you the narrator says, “You’re the kill who wants to be the kill, this is how they taught you” (Lee 20). Lee insists that the predator, the hunter, and the slaughterer (whether through love, security, or faith) drive the speaker crazy to the point of self-sacrifice.

Lee uses the hunt and hunted, the prey and preyed on, as a vehicle for understanding what makes us the undead. She also uses the term “the hunted hunter” to mean one not yet slaughtered.  Shanta argues that there is no survival of the fittest, as the dead never die and will eventually haunt the so-called fittest, this line from ‘This Story is About’ Lee writes  ‘This story is what imma tell, I’m the kill who caught the hunter, I’m the kill who eats, not swallowed, Dead, but not surrendered” (Lee 12).

There were a handful of relatable lines and literary elements that added to the reading experience. Strong storytelling in conjunction with direct references to the reader are featured in each part like a guidebook, tips with ittle bits of wisdom, a table of contents, and an on-theme disclaimer for the content that will follow. Multiple figures—honest archetypes that we readers could choose, or choose not to identify with—appear in this collection, too, making the poetry even more engaging. The archetypes of Fevered Feral, Hunter of Humans, Hunted Feral, Hunter of Wild Women, Hunted Wild, and Woman Hunter: Corpse Eater represent those who either take part in the slaughter, those who perpetuate the slaughter, and those who are cognizant of it and have and have the will to fight it.

These poems do not blame the victim. They do the opposite; they vindicate and validate all the nasty feelings that come with victimhood and the nasty business that is knowingly or unknowingly keeping those gears turning. This chapbook allows readers to face oppression and perhaps face the ways they’ve betrayed themselves because of its perpetual nature. Shanta Lee has set out to create something more than inspirational, a battle cry for the vulnerable, for the oh-so-neutral walking corpses in our world, and she has succeeded. This is a book that will move you to advocate for yourself and others and give recognition to the slaughter(ed). 

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