by Qwo-Li Driskill
Salt Publishing
5/15/2005, paperback
SKU: 9781844711130
Written from a contemporary Cherokee, Queer and mixed-race experience, these poems confront a legacy of land-theft, genocide, and forced removal, and resist ongoing attacks on both Indigenous and Gay/ Lesbian/ Bisexual /Transgender communities. Tender, startling, confrontational and erotic, this book honors the dead and brings the survivors back home.
Reviews:
"Qwo-Li Driskill's poetry, part lament and part manifesto, is haunted by ghost dancers. It is a record of those we've lost to the irrational hatred and fear of racism and homophobia. The voice within these poems chants, croons, sasses, and sings, for this is poetry meant to be spoken into being. In the tradition of other queer, socially-conscious poets, like Chrystos, Pat Parker, and Audre Lorde, the question of whether justice exists for all - especially for the poorest and most despised among us - burns at the center of this fine first collection." - Janice Gould
"My favorite lines in the collection mark the occasion of Ronald Reagan's death: 'Say it: we're not sad to see him go. No one I know shed a single/tear for his passing.' This is a reminder that not all of us are willing to go gentle into that good night as America wages its fight to the finish against our world. Now, more than ever, as the White House manufactures some of the news we watch on TV, we need poems, these and others, that contest the official story." - Craig S. Womack, author of Drowning in Fire
About the Author:
Qwo-Li Driskill is a Cherokee Two-Spirit/Queer writer and activist also of African, Irish, Lenape, Lumbee, and Osage ascent. Hir work has been included in Shenandoah, Many Mountains Moving, and in the anthologies Revolutionary Voices: A Multicultural Queer Youth Anthology and Speak to Me Words: Essays on Contemporary American Indian Poetry. S/he is currently living in Three Fires (Ojubwe, Odawa, Potowatomi) and Huron territories while pursuing a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing at Michigan State University.