black history

homage to my hips (1980)* these hips are big hips. they need space to move around in. they don’t fit into little pretty places. these hips are free hips. they don’t like to be held back. these hips have never been enslaved, they go where they want to go they do what they want to Read more

You ask me my opinion about the Negro dialect in literature? Well, frankly, I believe in everyone following his own bent…I don’t see the necessity of cramming and forcing oneself into that plane because one is a Negro or a Southerner. (Letter to Paul Laurence Dunbar.1895.) Read more

I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to. My Mother was as brave as the Read more

Persephone Abducted She cried out for Mama, who did not hear. She left with a wild eye thrown back, she left with curses, rage that withered her features to a hag’s. No one can tell a mother how to act: there are no laws when laws are broken, no names to call upon. Some say Read more