In three dozen poems and a two-act play, MacArthur Fellow Billie Jean Young honors the tradition of struggle, resistance, and survival common to generations of women descended from African slaves. The tradition she dramatizes in her acclaimed portrayal of Fannie Lou Hamer (here for the first time in book form)-the tradition of making a way out of no way-is the same tradition she celebrates in remembering her mother's "rub-board hands." Her poetry also reveals the often hidden costs of resistance. In this collection Young celebrates her personhood as well as her African American womanhood and...

This is a true story of a woman who learns a dark and troubling secret about her trusted husband that threatens to rip her world apart. With the aid of a group of daring women, she escapes with her four children to another country. In her new found freedom, she is able to examine the childhood experiences that influenced her to remain imprisoned and paralyzed in an abusive relationship for so long. It is a riveting story of one woman's search to understand her ignorance and tolerance of an abusive relationship and the parochial, male-dominated society in which she was trapped.