Imagine Being More Afraid...

Imagine Being More Afraid...

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Title: Imagine Being More Afraid Of Freedom Than Slavery: Poems
(Click title to order on-line)
Author: Pamela Sneed
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated
Date Published: April 1998
Format: Trade Paper

From Henry Holt
Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery tackles both personal and contemporary issues of enslavement, sexuality, emotional trauma, and physical abuse. From beginning to end, these poems chart the journey that is life and one woman's escape from the cycle of dependency as she recovers her lost identity. Thematically, they are bound by a writer's search for love and freedom, drawing on the spirit and will of Harriet Tubman, the image of Emmett Till's bloated body, the bombing of Philadelphia's MOVE, and lesbian love.

Review from Library Journal
This is Sneed's first book of poems, but she has already been on the cover of New York magazine and has performed for audiences in New York, Vienna, and Berlin. An African American from the suburbs of Boston, she describes herself as "trained for docility, factory work/ to divorce city Blacks/ settle quietly/ peacefully integrate/ lead crisp cotton, pleated pant/ Sunday school existence." An antidote to docility, her work explores, if not terribly deeply, the conflict between urban and suburban culture for a person of color and the emotional difficulties of straddling that line. And as a lesbian of color, Sneed is obsessed with bad love: how self-hatred leads to self-destructive relationships. After much discouragement and many false messiahs in the guise of oppressive lovers, her final rescuer is art: "And when the principal said/ and my mother said/ I would never amount to anything/ I became an artist/ and made myself." Although it is likely that Sneed knows her live audience and how to connect with it, she does not go out of her way to create a finished written product; here is powerful subject matter but not well-crafted poetry.Ellen Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine Law Lib., New York

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments
	Languages I've Never Learned	5
	The Final Solution	6
	The Silver Badge	8
	Eyes on the Prize	13
	Incest	15
	Jealousy	16
	Precious Crazy Girl Giggles	17
	Why Did You Have to Be a Poet?	18
	I haven't told you	20
	Blues Suite	21
	Elegy	22
	Rapunzel	23
	Underestimation of Power	24
	Teaching	26
	Stretch Marks and Cellulite	28
	New York	31
	When we broke up	32
	Planet of the Apes	33
	It Is Not a New Age	35
	The Woods	39
	History hasn't told the truth about revolutionaries	41
	Monologue to God	42
	Dear God,	44
	The Artist	46
	The Revolutionary	48
	Helpful Hints for an Aspiring Martyr	52
	Woman in Love 1	53
	Woman in Love 2	55
	Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery	57