Williams picks up the baton from Maya Angelou, raising her voice to decry racism and sexism in America.
In her debut chapbook of 18 timely poems, Williams (Humanities/Forsyth Technical Community Coll.) illuminates the African-American condition.
“To be black and happy in America is a fundamental paradox,” Williams says. The title’s qualified optimism thus reflects her ambivalence—celebrating black community and traditions on the one hand, condemning institutional racism on the other. “For Dubois” pinpoints poverty and a divided self as the common lot of African-Americans, while “Abandoned Aprons” shows how the place of black women is still defined by societal expectations. It’s not all outrage, though; some verses are pastoral recollections of a Southern upbringing (“mason jars / full of sweet tea”) or hymns to female solidarity (“Sister Speak”). Marriage and motherhood offer symbolic opportunities to join with ancestors in making a beautiful “tapestry” from “fraying ends.” Williams makes superb use of alliteration and sibilance to create chanting rhythms and gentle paradoxes: “unscathed but scarred…sweetly street” and “we savored your sullied beauty”—the latter expressing compassion toward Gil Scott-Heron rather than dismissing him as an addict. The book’s core is a handful of timely protest poems. The best one, “Meanwhile in America…,” contrasts inane celebrity culture (“Kimye births…While Miley twerks”) with Trayvon Martin’s wrongful death through the ironic refrain: “The system works / And Zimmerman walks.” Slant rhymes add to the sense of things being not quite right. “Diallo,” about the Guinean immigrant shot by New York City police in 1999, reminds us that police brutality is nothing new. Williams also defies opinions about the advances of the Obama administration: “Things ain’t better. / We ain’t making progress,” she insists. Likewise, “The If/Then Promise” flies in the face of sanctioned responses to violence: “I will not quote MLK….I will not seek calm.” Not quite happy, but with police or gunmen violence against African-Americans in the news seemingly every week, it’s justified. Books like Williams’ wield power to convince readers that black lives matter.
Williams picks up the baton from Maya Angelou, raising her voice to decry racism and sexism in America.Pub Date: June 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-46944-6
Page Count: 56
Publisher: Library Partners Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.
A collection speaks in part to the poet’s Mexican-American heritage.
In these multifaceted poems, Mexico-born, Houston-raised Salazar (Of Dreams and Thorns, 2017) explores general human themes like love and war in addition to specific experiences as a person of color. The book begins with a sensual meditation on desire, featuring luscious descriptions of a lover, from lips “moist like youth” to the body’s “softest velvet” slopes. The poems shift to odes to cultural icons like the Tejano star Selena and Mexican-German painter Frida Kahlo as well as occasion pieces honoring his brother’s 40th birthday and a friend’s mother’s memorial service. The author hits his stride when he delves into identity. In “I Am Not Brown,” he contemplates the societal implications of skin tone and his inability to fit into the rigid category of Caucasian or Latino. “For white and black and brown alike / Are slaves to history’s brush strokes,” he writes. “Grateful for the Work,” perhaps Salazar’s loveliest poem, catalogs the day of a laborer, starting with an early morning awakening and following him as he toils in 100-degree heat, enjoys tacos from his lunch pail, buys beverages from a child’s lemonade stand, and returns home to an equally hard-working wife. The author then makes an abrupt turn toward Syria in a series of poems that condemn that country’s president, Bashar Hafez al-Assad. They serve as a rallying cry for Syrians and grieve for the murdered masses. Salazar’s closing poem, “Sons of Bitches,” is a clunky rant about a 20-year-old immigrant shot in the head by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The gratuitous violence and political theologizing are ill at ease with the intimate, personal experiences that preceded them, such as the fablelike “A Mexican is Made of This,” in which Salazar beautifully describes the “rainbows, bronze, backbone, butterflies” that his people embody.
A volume of poetry that shines when focused on the author’s experiences of race and culture.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9991496-3-8
Page Count: 166
Publisher: Bronze Diamond Productions
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.
Diehl’s debut poetry collection showcases the arduous search for human connection and self-understanding.
In free verse poems that combine strong metaphors with prosaic passages, the poet wanders along a lifelong path of self-knowledge. She first describes it as a “pilgrimage…to accept what’s been deemed unworthy inside us,” and the trail leads to important insights. In a plainly stated yet necessary reminder, the author asserts that being human, despite the loneliness one may encounter, “is not a solitary pursuit.” Above all else, the book voices a desire for transparency in the self and in others. In “Clear Stream,” moving water illuminates objects within it, even as mystery waits at the bottom, and the water’s clarity corresponds to the speaker’s offering of his- or herself to view: “Here I am. // Come see me if you want.” Sometimes the tumble of words in these short stanzas suggests a pouring forth of injury: “It’s the show-stopping blow of loss upending a heart pain over pain till capacity for love regulates its beating.” Readers will understand a back story involving love and loss, difficulty in communication, sadness, and acceptance of children growing up. The poems gain strength from well-chosen accompanying images, including sketches and paintings by Dimenichi and colorful works by Jamaican-born painter Powell that enrich the verbal landscape. Several full-page images by each artist appear, suggesting a thematic connection or amplifying an emotion in a given poem. A richly textured, grand illustration of a tree by Dimenichi, for example, appears alongside a poem that celebrates the inspiration of such towering entities. A poem concerned with self-reflection joins a Powell painting of floating, twinned female forms. The figures seem to both depict and satisfy the speaker’s need to be seen, with their emphasis on mirror images, body doubles, and echoes of shapes. Even the windshield of a car can be a “two way mirror” behind which the driver is “invisible to life outside.” An explicitly female body is glimpsed in the sketches, and the warm, dreamlike compositions give it substance.
Poems and images that ask readers to appreciate a searching body for its beauty and grace.Pub Date: July 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-304-13091-4
Page Count: 58
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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