The latest collection from award-winning poet Vievee Francis, The Shared World imagines the ideas and ideals and spaces of the Black woman. / In truth, we are bound by one story, so you\'d think by now / we\'d tell it, at least to each other..
The secret to knowing the secret is to speak, she concludes, but we too often tell / the stories of no matter and avoid the one story that does matter.
What emerges is a realm of intertwined experiences.
Her voice encompasses humor and gravity, enigma and revelation.
Francis\'s lyric gifts are on full display as she probes self-discovery, history, intimacy, and violence.
More hands than yours have closed / around my throat.
You can\'t stop this / song, she writes.
These poetic narratives are brutal in their lyrical blows but tender with the bruised history left behind.
This raw assemblage of poetic narratives stares down the oppressors from within and writes a new language in the art of taking back the body and the memory.
Francis challenges the ways in which Black women are often dismissed while expected to be nurturing.
The book delves into inherited memories and restrictions between families, lovers, and strangers and the perception and inconvenient truth of Black woman as mother--with or without child.
The latest collection from award-winning poet Vievee Francis, The Shared World imagines the ideas and ideals and spaces of the Black woman
