I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On

Khadijah Queen

Book cover for I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On
Image for variant 9781936919468
Book cover for I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On
Image for variant 9781936919468

I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On

I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On

Khadijah Queen

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Description

Included in U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith's feature, "6 Recent Collections that Deliver Truth with Originality and Grace" in O, The Oprah Magazine, April 2018

Finalist, CLMP Firecracker Award in Fiction, 2018

Finalist, American Book Fest Best Book Award in Fiction, 2018

Finalist, Balcones Poetry Prize, 2017

Longlist, Julie Suk Award, 2018


Part 1980s and 1990s nostalgia, part exuberant storytelling, I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On turns a sharply humorous magnifying glass onto gendered interactions in daily life, framed primarily by random celebrity encounters in Los Angeles. Far from a narrative of fame-chasing or conceit, however, I'm So Fine breathlessly addresses what it means for a woman to fight for dignity and survival in an often hostile environment, to come into her own power as she decides what she wants for herself "& mostly gets its every fineness."

Critical Reviews

"The book is an investigation of celebrity culture and toxic masculinity that moves at a lyrical sprint, stuffed with characters and movements, with the ampersand often serving as the only available punctuation. We rush along with Queen, experiencing the world as she does, and wanting, like her, to desperately fight our way out of it."

-Hanif Abdurraqib for The New Yorker


I'm So Fine is an accumulation that is the feminine memory that has had enough. This book is strength, is a critique, is subversive, is a woman, a fist, an lol, an F.U., a refusal, a gaze back at the gaze, is inevitable freedom wearing a flowered dress Kente cloth bomber jacket red lipstick white jeans a velvet choker white platform sandals a black turtleneck electric blue column dress an eggshell blouse with a high collar & pearl buttons is wearing a powerful woman's body and mind.

-Natalie Diaz, author of When My Brother Was an Aztec


Khadijah Queen's fearless new collection, I'm So Fine: A List of Famous Men & What I Had On, is equal parts illuminating and disconcerting, much like the celebrity cultures and patriarchal systems the book critiques. These always stylish, quick-witted pieces serve as a pop culture archive-of almost forgotten R&B singers and A-list movie stars, rappers and comedians-while breaking down fame in all of its glittery, corporation-supported entitlement. By offering us a sophisticated new lens through which we might view self-actualization, Queen reframes our understandings of gender and notoriety.

-Adrian Matejka, author of The Big Smoke

Publishing Information

Publisher: YesYes Books
Pub date: 2017-03-15
Length: 96 pages

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