Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery: Poems

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080505474X ISBN 13: 9780805054743

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 1998

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 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.

From Kirkus Reviews:

paper 0-8050-5474-X The poetically inept and politically inane rantings of performance artist Sneed would escape notice but for mainstream publishings cravenly bringing her meager verse to the market and exploiting the anger and confusion of the self-styled revolutionary lesbian poet. Sneed's first book proves that whatever may have been powerful as chanted on the stage is sloppy and facile on the page. Shamed by her suburban hang-ups, Sneed cultivates ``a kick-ass spirit'' and shouts out to all thoselovers, teachers, fatherwho ``UNDERESTIMATED'' her ``POWER.'' She identifies with ``abused'' kids, bemoans ``shackling poverty'' and ``unfeministic jealousy.'' Her political martyrology is a confusion of images from Harriet Tubman to the group rapists in Central Park. Years of therapy reveal that ``psychotherapy is. . . a capitalist tool.'' The poets confusion of politics and pathology leads eventually to the insight that ``the real revolution/is changing myself.'' Underneath it all runs a sad plea for acceptance of the love she offers, and, less appealingly, an amazing desire for literary prizes and big saleswhich just might come to pass, as Sneeds irresponsible publishers no doubt are gambling. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.