Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery: Poems - Softcover

Sneed, Pamela

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080505474X ISBN 13: 9780805054743

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1998

Synopsis

When daddy pushed me and girlhood innocence out my bedroom window I picked up the shattered pieces of myself and became a woman Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery is lyrical and provocative, humorous and potent as it tackles both personal and contemporary issues of enslavement, sexuality, psychological trauma, and physical abuse. From beginning to end some of these poems chart the journey that is life and one woman's cycle of dependency as she recovers her lost identity. Thematically, it is bound by a writer's search for love and fight for freedom, drawing on the spirit and will of Harriet Tubman, the image of the bloated body of Emmett Till, the bombing of Philadelphia Move, and lesbian love. In the tradition of June Jordan and Sapphire, Pamela Sneed presents an in-your-face, powerful, and stirring debut.

About this title

About the Author

Pamela Sneed, a New York-based performance poet, has graced the cover of New York magazine and was featured in The New York Times Magazine. She has performed at Lincoln Center, The Whitney Museum of Art, and in Berlin, Vienna, and London.

Reviews

This is Sneed's first book of poems, but she has already been on the cover of New York magazine and has performed for audiences in New York, Vienna, and Berlin. An African American from the suburbs of Boston, she describes herself as "trained for docility, factory work/ to divorce city Blacks/ settle quietly/ peacefully integrate/ lead crisp cotton, pleated pant/ Sunday school existence." An antidote to docility, her work explores, if not terribly deeply, the conflict between urban and suburban culture for a person of color and the emotional difficulties of straddling that line. And as a lesbian of color, Sneed is obsessed with bad love: how self-hatred leads to self-destructive relationships. After much discouragement and many false messiahs in the guise of oppressive lovers, her final rescuer is art: "And when the principal said/ and my mother said/ I would never amount to anything/ I became an artist/ and made myself." Although it is likely that Sneed knows her live audience and how to connect with it, she does not go out of her way to create a finished written product; here is powerful subject matter but not well-crafted poetry.AEllen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080505474X
• ISBN 13: 9780805054743
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80