Lucille Clifton: good woman: poetry and a memoir 1969-1980

In honor of National Poetry Month, our selection for The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series is Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980, by Lucille Clifton. A work that consists of her first four published collections and her 1976 memoir. This combined manuscript was published in 1987 by BOA Editions. and is accessible through hoopladigital.com.

Lucille Clifton was born Thelma Lucille Sayles in 1936 and passed away in 2010. Clifton was an African- American poet, children’s book author, and educator from Buffalo, New York. From 1979 to 1985 she was Poet Laureate of Maryland and was nominated twice in the same year as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.

Although Lucille Clifton went on to publish six more manuscripts after good woman, this particular book was chosen because it includes both her early poetry and her memoir.

The memoir,entitled Generations starts on the day of her father’s death and flashes back through his life all the way back to the life of her enslaved great-great grandmother Caroline Sayles who had been born in Dahomey (now Benin, West Africa). An often repeated phrase throughout Clifton’s work is “Get what you want, you from Dahomey Women”

Won’t you celebrate with me

won't you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

Lucille Clifton

(left to right) June Jordan, Alice Walker, Lucille Clifton,

and Audre Lorde at the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival.

Nov. 1973.

Lucille Clifton in her later years

Comments

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby, 2003

Nine of us met on Saturday March 16 th to discuss Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby, published in 2003. Although born 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, Ella Baker was predominantly reared in Littleton, North Carolina. Her Civil Rights and Human Rights career spanned over five decades, some of her work took place in New York and some took place in the South. Some of the groups she worked with are YNC L Young Negroes’ Cooperative League WEP Worker s’ Education Project NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference M FDP Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party SCEF Southern Christian Education Fund SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee She established her place in these movements as a behind the scenes organizer and never sought leadership positions. Her philosophy abou...

Don't Cry for Me by Daniel Black

The author, Dr. Daniel Black, said “ T his book is what most of us in many ways would hope that our parents would do one day. And that is to give us their hearts, share with us their story . This is the story of a man named Jacob Swinton who is on his death bed, and he is writing a series of letters. It’s the epistolary form . The l etters are to his estranged gay son named Isaac. The Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series continued July 13 th , 2024 , where we discussed this amazing book. Before this meeting, the group listened to a YouTub e video of an interview with Dr. Black that had been recorded earlier this year. This video can be found by searching All CT Reads 2024 Dr. Daniel Black on Yo u Tube. Wendy started us out, saying, “ I listened to it on audiobook, and Dr. Black read it. I really liked that because it brought it to life. The downside was places where I thought he captured something about his own experience or love, and I wish I had it on a ...

In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas 2023

Book Discussion of In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas Thirteen of us met on Saturday Oct. 5 th to discuss Kai Thomas’s In the Upper Country , his debut novel. The story begins with an elderly woman who has escaped slavey from the US, and is now in Canada, shoots a slavecatcher who has tracked her there. A much younger woman, a jou rnalist name Lensinda is assigned the task of interviewing the old woman, who is now in jail. When Lensinda asks the woman for her story, the woman responds by saying, “A tale for a tale.” Thus, Lensinda is required to tell a story to receive the old woman’s story. This starts a reciprocal arrangement of storytelling over the interviews. Kai Thomas, author Wendy started us out saying, “I have to say I loved listening to it, but I also think that if I had read it, I may have absorbed more. I thought the language was just exquisite . I also kept feeling that each story I would lose track of sometimes, bu t I stopped worryin...

Urban Life Experience Book Discussion Series

Search This Blog