Pat Parker

Movement in Black Pat Parker Expanded edition

Publisher Marketing: Pat Parker -- that revolutionary, raw and as they used to say, "right-on sister" -- would be celebrating her fifty-fifth birthday in 1999 had she not died of breast cancer ten years ago. To honor her work and call attention to the significance of her contributions, Firebrand Books is publishing a new, expanded edition of her classic, Movement In Black. With an incisive introduction by Cheryl Clarke, celebrations/ remembrances/tributes from ten outstanding African American women writers, and a dozen previously unpublished pieces, Movement In Black is a must read/ must have on your book shelf. Whether she was presenting her poetry on street corners, performing with other women -- writers, musicians, activists -- in bars and auditoriums, rallying the crowd at political events, preaching to the converted, or converting the ill-informed, Pat Parker was a presence. She wrote about gut issues: the lives of ordinary Black people, violence, loving women, the legacy of her African American heritage, being queer. She was a woman who engaged life fully, both personally and as a political activist, linking the struggles for racial, gender, sexual, and class equality long before it was "PC" to do so. She died as she lived -- fighting forces larger than herself. The publication of Movement In Black is an opportunity, both for those who were around the first time and those who are new to her work, to experience and enjoy Pat Parker's power. Review Citations: Booklist 03/15/1999 (EAN 9781563411083, Paperback) Booklist 03/15/1999 pg. 1279 (EAN 9781563411090, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Clarke, Cheryl Cheryl Clarke is a poet, essayist, scholar, and activist. Her most recent books are the critical study, After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (Rutgers Press, 2005); The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005 (Carroll and Graf, 2006); and the poetry collection LIVING AS A LESBIAN (A Midsummer Night's Press, 2014). She lives with her partner in Jersey City, NJ and Hobart, NY.