Poetry
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Even though the way this is written suggests that the working class experience is something separate from the experience of people of color (the majority of whom are working class), I still found it a valuable read. Source: How The Literary Class System Is Impoverishing Literature | Literary Hub
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The crisis is arrived when we must assert our rights, or submit to every imposition, that can be heaped upon us, till custom and use shall make us as tame and abject slaves, as the blacks we rule over with such arbitrary sway. – George Washington Slave prettily pretending on the promenade. A…
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I was tracked as a kid. My mother, an immigrant, assumed that the educational professionals knew something she didn’t know about her troublesome girl child and let them put me into “special” ed. As painful and contradictory as that decision was, I don’t blame her. I understand, now, that she didn’t understand the context in…
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I. If you see me praying in the living room, never sit in front of me. You are not God. Source: Yalie Kamara |
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“Those familiar with my work already know that I champion Historical Poetry. They also likely know that no other group of poets has done more to define, establish, and make an argument for what clearly is a new genre than contemporary African American poets. No other cohort seems as committed to historical truth, arts activism,…
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A few year ago, lamenting the challenges of this juggling act, senior scholars in my department advised me to start thinking about my manuscripts as occupying different places in a pipeline, with proposals on one end and published articles at the other. The goal: Keep your papers distributed along that pipeline, and flowing through. Source:…
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I Represent I represent the oppressed black womb penetrated too early in its development. No one takes the time to explain abortion before I am strapped in the clinic gurney to have the baby he planted scraped out. One day, I was watching Dora and the next day my teacher said I was a statistic.…
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Here, I eat the chips of childhood; salt in the air and salt and vinegar in my mouth. Salivating stillness after the turtle-like triumph of treading to the top we put a period on the promenade. Proudly private people we prostrate ourselves in lounge chairs designed for that express purpose. This is one of…
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Lesson Touring the Penn Center, St. Helena’s, SC I am wading through the dark morass of history, Beaufort at dusk fills with humid air from the swamps and the mangrove of stagnant sea water’s calm rice ponds, and the muttering old spirits, the sharp lament of crickets and the trees close in on us. The…
Tichaona Chinyelu 
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