"I was a street kid by day and by night I was a library kid. At the library I would go the shelves alphabetically. I was drawn to anyone with a female name, with a Latino or Spanish name. There were very, very few. But as a teenager I discovered African American poetry. Gwendolyn Brooks was the first. Then Phillis Wheatley. I really identified with this slave woman writing poetry to assert and affirm her humanity. Suddenly my eyes were open to history. There was a whole explosion of African-American women poets-Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan. I have a poem in my head that's going to take me years to write down. Its working title is "On Thanking Black Muses." I owe them, because poetry really changed my life, saved it."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Women authors from the United States20th-century poets from the United StatesFeminists from the United StatesWomen activists from the United StatesNative American activists
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lorna_Dee_Cervantes
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Lorna Dee Cervantes
26 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Lorna Dee Cervantes →
Related Quotes
"We knew, love, and that was all we were ever offered."
"In the years that separate, in the tongues that divide and conquer, in the love that was a language in itself, you ne…"
"I ran flushed and shadowed by no one alone I settled stiff in mouth with the words women gave me."
"And finally, it is me only guessing at what secrets or hatreds they share."
"I am not driven, so much, by intentions, as I am stunned into being by intent."
"Reading African American women poets politicized me. And it was the fact that poetry politicized me that had to do wi…"
"I intended all of that. And this is what I like about this, and drawings like draw, like the gunman. I call this the …"
"This is the conscience of trauma. This is a grief book. That's how I refer to it, privately. It's my grief book becau…"
"When I first went to Mexico in 1974 and was involved in Chicano teatro—Mexican American guerilla theater—I realized t…"
"And late that night I tasted the last of the sweet fruit, sucked the rich pit and thought nothing of death."