The Fat Black Woman's Poems

by Nichols, Grace

• ISBN13: 9780860686354
• ISBN10: 0860686353
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1984-09-13
• Publisher: Virago

Summary

Grace Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself' poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors, to a white world that still turns its back. Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures and sadnesses of memory, of loving, of power.

Author Biography

Born in 1950 in Guyana, where she grew up, Grace Nichols worked as a jounalist and reporter. She came to Britain in 1977 and has published several children's books. Her cycle of poems, I IS A LONG MEMORIED WOMAN, won the 1983 Commonwealth Poetry Prize.

Table of Contents

The Fat Black Woman's Poems
Beauty	7	(1)
The Assertion	8	(1)
The Fat Black Woman Remembers	9	(1)
Alone	10	(1)
The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping	11	(1)
Invitation	12	(2)
Trap Evasions	14	(1)
Thoughts drifting through the fat black woman's head while having a full bubble bath	15	(1)
The Fat Black Woman Composes a Black Poem...	16	(1)
...And a Fat Poem	17	(1)
The Fat Black Woman's Motto on Her Bedroom Door	18	(1)
Tropical Death	19	(1)
Looking at Miss World	20	(1)
The Fat Black Woman's Instructions to a Suitor	21	(1)
The Fat Black Woman Versus Politics	22	(1)
Small Questions Asked by the Fat Black Woman	23	(1)
Afterword	24	(3)
In Spite of Ourselves
Like a Beacon	27	(1)
Fear	28	(1)
Island Man	29	(1)
We New World Blacks	30	(1)
Shopping	31	(1)
Winter Thoughts	32	(1)
Skanking Englishman Between Trains	33	(1)
Spring	34	(1)
Two Old Black Men on a Leicester Square Park Bench	35	(1)
Waiting for Thelma's Laughter	36	(3)
Back Home Contemplation
Those Women	39	(1)
Childhood	40	(1)
Back Home Contemplation	41	(1)
Price We Pay for the Sun	42	(1)
So the Eagle	43	(1)
Praise Song for My Mother	44	(1)
Why Shouldn't She?	44	(1)
Hey There Now!	45	(1)
Candlefly	46	(1)
Mango	47	(1)
Star-apple	47	(1)
Guenips	47	(1)
Sea Timeless Song	48	(1)
Be a Butterfly	49	(1)
Iguana Memory	50	(3)
i is a long memoried woman
Waterpot	53	(1)
Loveact	54	(1)
Skin-teeth	55	(1)
Sugar Cane	56	(4)
Like a Flame	60	(1)
This Kingdom	61	(2)
Holding My Beads	63	(1)
Epilogue	64