Search results for ""author opal palmer adisa""

Opal Palmer Adisa employs the modes of autobiography, dramatic monologues, lyrical observations, encomiums, prose poems and prophetic rants in a collection that enacts the construction of a sense of identity whose dimensions encompass a Rastafarian sense of inner 'i-ness', gender, race, geography, the spiritual, the social and the political. In several poems, Palmer speaks through the voices of iconic historical figures such as Phyllis Wheatley, who after the process of cultural loss and enforced imitation finds her own voice, or a ghostly Nat Turner who speaks as an invisible presence in the white world storing away his knowledge of that world to use the next time round. There are contemporary icons, too, such as the late Audrey Lorde, Barbara Christian and June Jordan, strong women who are held up as models of writers committed to the responsibility of speaking out, of pursuing beauty in their writing and personal relationships, of supporting community and fighting injustice. Palmer speaks more directly of self in poems that explore the experience of being a Black person in the world of Oakland, poems which range from a pained but empathetic response to the racial transformations of Michael Jackson, her experience of Black male chauvinism in the classroom and a moving account of the senility of a beloved grandmother. The empathy in Opal Palmer Adisa's work is nowhere more clearly seen than in "Ancestry", a poem that rejects the customary practice of choosing only the past's heroes to relate to, embracing both rebels and betrayers, fighters and the acquiescent: 'i claim all of them/ and you who turned against us/ and led them to our secret place.../ i claim you aunt jemima/ and uncle tom.../ we are all one family...' Then, almost at the end of the collection, comes a poem called "Beyond the Frame" that in its oblique but inescapable images of childhood sexual abuse, suddenly begins to suggest what kind of act of will has gone into the construction of an 'I' who is 'an incisor gnawing my way.'

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Caribbean Passion is feisty, sensuous and thought provoking -- everything one expects from Opal Palmer Adisa. Whether writing about history, Black lives, family, or love and sexual passion, she has an acute eye for the contraries of experience. Her Caribbean has a dynamic that draws from its dialectic of oppression and resistance; her childhood includes both the affirmation of parents that makes her 'leap fences' and the 'jeer of strange men on the street/that made your feet stumble'; and men are portrayed both as predators and as the objects of erotic desire.This vision of contraries is rooted in an intensely sensuous apprehension of the physical world. She observes the Caribbean's foods and flora with exactness; makes them emblematic metaphors that are often rewardingly oblique; and uses them as starting points for engagingly conversational meditations on aspects of remembered experience. There is a witty play between food and sexuality, but counterpointing her celebration of the erotic, there is a keen sense of the oppression of the female body. In her poem 'Bumbu Clat', for instance, she explores the deformation of a word that originally signified 'sisterhood' to become part of the most transgressive and misogynist curse in Jamaican society. In this doubleness of vision, the term 'womanist' was invented to describe Opal Palmer Adisa's work.Opal Palmer Adisa is a Jamaica-born, award-winning poet, educator and storyteller. Anthologised in over 100 publications, she is a regular performer of her work throughout the USA and presently lives in Oakland, California, when she is not traveling.

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When Crystal and Donald meet they are two modern, urban professionals, caught n the currents of life and fundamentally unsuited to one another, but bound by the one thing they have in common: powerful sexual desires. Marriage and four children later, Crystal and Donald are at a crossroads. Framed by the Yoruba belief system, the novel dances between the real-life drama that unfolds between Crystal and Donald and the spiritual fantasy world of the Orishas, where every human act has a spiritual ramification. Moving between California, Africa and the Caribbean, Painting Away Regrets is a compelling story of love, betrayal, madness and reconciliation."Solid, visceral, important... written with integrity and love."Alice Walker, author of The Color PurpleOpal Palmer Adisa was born in Jamaica, but has lived and worked in the US for almost forty years. She won a Pushcart Prize in 1987 for her short story 'Duppy Get Her'. She is the author of twelve books, including the poetry collections Caribbean Passion (2004) and I Name Me Name (2008), and the short-story collection Until Judgment Comes (2007); all three are published by Peepal Tree. More recently she co-edited the anthology Caribbean Erotic: Poetry, Prose and Essays with Donna Weir-Soley (Peepal Tree, 2010). She has taught at several universities including Stanford University and University of California, Berkeley. She is currently the editor of the Caribbean Writer.

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The stories in this collection move the heart and the head. They are told by an old Jamaican woman about the community that has grown up around her, the village's first inhabitant. They concern the mystery that is men: men of beauty who are as lilies of the field, men who are afraid of and despise women, brutal men who prey on women, men who are searching for their feminine side, men who have lost themselves, men trapped in sexual and religious guilt. The seven stories are structured around the wise sayings, concerning the nature of judgment, divine, but mostly human, that she remembers as her grandfather's principle legacy to her. But the stories are far from illustrative tracts for the sayings - their starting points - but free-flowing narratives that explore all the complexity of life. Again, in focusing on men, the sociological truth of Jamaican life - that many men are absentee fathers; that many boys are brought up only by their mothers - is also only a starting point for a series of sensitive and imaginative explorations of the male psyche. Above all the collection is in love with telling stories - stories within stories, the reworkings of Jamaican folktales, tall tales and myths. There is a severity about the stories in the sense that actions and inactions have consequences that cannot be evaded, but there is always some possibility of change to be found by those who look for it. Jeremiah has been driven to a state of frozen, guilty isolation by the brutality his mother has visited on him as a vicarious punishment for the sins of his father. But even he comes to realise that 'He will not be his father. He will not be his mother. He will be himself despite the memories crowding in.' These are not judgmental stories by a woman about men. Responsibility is never only on one side. There is love and understanding for the characters in these stories - love that is tough, provocative and demanding of attention, but love none the less. As Jeremiah discovers, 'Allow thyself grace and blessings will follow.'

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