Lions Don't Eat Us: Poems - Softcover

Bridges, Constance Quarterman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555974546 ISBN 13: 9781555974541

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2006

Synopsis

The winner of the 2005 Cave Canem Poetry Prize, Lions Don't Eat Us introduces a fierce and wise new voice


There's nothing to be afraid of.
Don't ever let boys kiss you.
Be nice. One day you'll get married.
Keep your legs closed. Dance.
―from "Grandmother Said"

In one of Aesop's Fables, the Roman slave Androcles befriends the emperor's lion prior to his trial and thereby survives certain death in the arena. Constance Quarterman Bridges's father tells this story to his children and says, "My Babies, we're special people, lions don't eat us." In this remarkable debut collection, Bridges chronicles her ancestry―part born out of slavery, part descended from Cherokee heritage―from her great-grandparents "jumping over the broom" in Civil War Virginia to her father's journey in the Great Migration northward in 1916. The result is an unequivocally American story.

Lions Don't Eat Us is the 2005 winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, given to the best first collection by an African-American poet.

About this title

About the Author

CONSTANCE QUARTERMAN BRIDGES retired from the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 1987. She has won two fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School—Bridges opens the family scrapbook, searches the "licorice-colored pages," probes deeply into the lives of the "people folded away like paper dolls," and, with considerable eloquence and dignity, explores the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of four generations of the "family who waited for me in the grape-leaf green album." Employing simple and fresh language, the poems consistently get to the core of the many relationships among these family members of African and Native American descent. Readers will find a truly American story of great pain and despair, but one not lacking in reward and pleasure. Some of these people are weak, but more are strong. Some are self-centered, but more are family-oriented. And most join rather than merely watch the figurative (and literal) Dance. Bridges writes that Grandma Ellen "wore her quietness/like a Sunday bonnet," that she lived in a South "dredged in slavery/and inhabited by quiet women both/black and white who wore shells of gentility," and yet Ellen "spoke against slavery, had opinions/in a time when women were seen/and not heard." Readers learn that the Easter-time marriage of "pale Albert" and "chocolate Rhoda" was "full of colored eggs/sons, daughters, my grandfather Austin." With this testimonial to the lives of her predecessors, Bridges not only gives them a lasting voice, but also probes the character of a particular time and place, as well as universal concerns of all people. This superb, accessible collection deserves a wide audience.—Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
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About this edition

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1555974546
• ISBN 13: 9781555974541
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80