Analysis Of Nikky Finney's Brown Country

Nikky Finney, in her book of poetry Rice, captures her intention to “camera / What they believed / Could not be caught” (“Daguerre of Negras” 1-3). In other words, she records what she and people like her believe as well as what they perceive cannot be captured, reached, or taken hold of (OED, 1). By converting the noun camera into a verb, Nikky Finney expands the meaning of camera. She moves from the simple recorded image (i.e., from a still or moving picture) and expands it into the act of recording, the act of movement, the act of capturing a moment, etc. Furthermore, she uses words as her lens to “snapshot the face / Of the unwilling travelers,” exhorting readers to bring out their camera to document the atrocities they see. (Implying that each person determines his or her medium, the speaker reflects that words are her camera.) By doing so, all beings bear witness to the experiences that heretofore had not been captured. Using poetry as her lens, Finney's scathing commentary about the emasculation of the spirit propels readers to dismantle their notions of what it means to be an outcast in society and to return to the self.
She is drawn to the music of the land and yet she wonders why Indians being Holocausted and Africans “jumping the broom on Sunday”(getting married) to show the female’s willingness to “clean the courtyard of the new home she had joined” (AMR), are not part of country music. Despite the missing links connecting the experiences of people apart from the mainstream, the speaker loves the depth of “the haunted-hunted heart,” experiencing the pain of love in the music. Eventually, though, the speaker realizes she will never be known to sing a good country song—country is color-coded and she is the wrong shade of country,