Race and gender have denied many their rightful place in the canon of humanity’s arts.
In today’s world, in the blink of an electronic pulse, words can be transported across continents and peoples and all too easily lost in the ever-growing mass of disposable culture of ‘me-me-me’ and ‘more- more-more’. We can all be ‘woke’ be ‘politically correct’ be outraged at a transgression or even a slight. Everything means something to someone.
But, once again, more modern times miss the reality of what others in previous generations suffered in the battle for equality and recognition. In America, to be black and a woman over the years this volume covers, was to be chattel, to be bartered, sold, trafficked and used for no more than the whims of others.
It was a harsh reality, and yet…., and yet, these women produced verse that sears our souls with the ambition to tell others, to share with us all, what life was like, what was endured and the heartbreak of what their reality was. They could not be overcome; their voice sought to endure and not be smothered.
Words are powerful weapons, they form ideas, they create movements and manifestos that can change the world. Many of the women in this volume added to those words, to that desire that the words of their Constitution would someday include themselves. The fight is not yet wholly won, prejudice and inequality still single them out but the flame of hope, of destiny continues to burn fiercely with their names.
Their poetry is not solely of protest but rich in a range of subjects embracing tenderness, love, family and includes works by Alice Dunbar Nelson, Frances W Harper, Phyllis Wheatley, Zora Neale Hurston, Esther Popel, Clarissa Scott Delany and many others whose voice voices call to us through the years.