Mine is a Community of Misfits & Outlaws - Softcover

Johnson, Jesse James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0977298531 ISBN 13: 9780977298532

Publisher: Will to Print Press, 2024

Synopsis

Mine is Community of Misfits and Outlaws. These are poems, infused with the raw energy and wonderment of a writer for whom regards poetry is a force for social transformation. The poems are organized into two collections - the first, The Tenderloin Poems are a celebration and defense of the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. A vibrant mosaic of ethnicities, languages, faiths, and complexions and one last enclaves of poor and working-class people in the City. The second collection the Long Twilight is a geography of myth, history, and memory in which the personal is intertwined with the cultural and political developments of this country. These poems skip around early childhood events; sweep through the flowering of identity; the origins of political consciousness; and the poet's discovery of the body. Here there are poems of darker time - life in wilderness of urban America during the AIDS epidemic. These are followed by poems grappling with living in this period of environmental degradation and its unpromising consequences.

About this title

About the Author

Jesse James Johnson is a queer Tejano/Chicano poet who has lived in the Tenderloin for almost thirty years. Born in Austin, Texas he is a product of the Chicano/a Arts Renaissance Movement and thus heir to a literary tradition that regards poetry as a force for social transformation. He has facilitated creative writing workshops for special populations including young gay men of color, people with AIDS, the formerly incarcerated, program participants of Hospitality House and members of the SF Drug Users Union. In 2015 and again in 2018 he was a Hidden Gems Awardee of the Wildflowers Institute. He recently received a grant from the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts to collaborate on a series of short videos about the Tenderloin. Mine is a Community of Misfits and Outlaws is his first published book of poetry. However as an active poet for more than 25 years, he has given readings, inspired his neighbors to action, and incited artists to change the world around them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Will to Print Press
• Publication date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0977298531
• ISBN 13: 9780977298532
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 126