Summary

The Beacon Best of 1999is what I would like to remember as the year 2000 approaches, sketches of what we hold sacred and keep for those to come. . . . These stories, poems, and essays pay homage to what's become of us, to what we bring to the next millennium-the sweet rememberings of the imagined." -Ntozake Shange, from the Introduction Continuing a commitment to presenting experiences drawn from lives lived outside the lines, Beacon Press presentsThe Beacon Best of 1999, a dazzling collection that includes the work of Dorothy Allison, Junot Diaz, Rita Dove, Louise Erdrich, Martin Espada, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Ha Jin, Jamaica Kincaid, Barbara Kingsolver, Yusef Komunyakaa, Hanif Kureishi, Marjorie Sandor, and John Edgar Wideman, as well as rising stars like Toure and Reetika Vazirani. Acclaimed playwright, poet, and novelist Ntozake Shange has chosen a treasury of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction published over the past year. InThe Beacon Best of 1999, women and men writing with fine grace ask us to look at the whole picture, from the street to the second story-to see, perhaps for the first time, the life of boxer Jack Johnson, or the fierceness of a love transformed into rage for a child killed by gang violence, or the complexities of a love affair in New Delhi, as lenses through which to consider questions of courage, brotherhood, and beauty. The alternative literary annual,The Beacon Best of 1999,/i> will introduce you to a world where tradition and convention are overturned and the unexpected is a welcome guest.

Author Biography

Award-winning playwright, novelist, and poet Ntozake Shange is author of Liliane; Sassafras, Cypress, and Indigo; Betsey Brown, and many other works including the acclaimed choreopoem, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. She teaches at Prairie View A&M University in Houston, Texas, and Brown University in Providence Rhode Island.

Introduction	p. ix
A Boy Called Risk	p. 1
1967	p. 3
Water	p. 13
Darkest Purple	p. 19
The Lemons	p. 20
Gloomy Sunday	p. 21
Reluctant Death	p. 23
El Lobo Solo	p. 26
For a Daughter Who Leaves	p. 40
Intimacy	p. 42
Common Water	p. 58
Who's Irish?	p. 67
A Young Girl's Lament	p. 79
Pink	p. 82
What Is a Brother?	p. 84
Like That	p. 87
The Date	p. 89
The Sun, the Moon, the Stars	p. 97
A New Delhi Romance	p. 112
Venus of Willendorf	p. 136
Orphan of Love	p. 137
Closer	p. 153
Waiting for Amelia	p. 156
Leadership	p. 163
Driving	p. 166
Goodbye, Johnnie Walker	p. 179
Licking the Woman	p. 189
The Drowned Man's Notes	p. 192
Deer Crossing the Sea	p. 201
The Wilderness North of the Merrimack	p. 202
A New Flower	p. 217
Garden of Envy	p. 218
This Is Our World	p. 221
Naked Woman Playing Chopin	p. 231
At the Society for the Promotion of Indian Classical Music and Culture among Youth	p. 245
Volcanic Songs	p. 247
Where the Markets Converge	p. 249
How Poems Happen	p. 252
How to Kiss	p. 255
The Dance School	p. 257
For the Jim Crow Mexican Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts Where My Cousin Esteban Was Forbidden to Wait Tables Because He Wears Dreadlocks	p. 267
The Sad Sweet Story of Sugar Lips Shinehot and the Portable Promised Land	p. 269
Some Kind of Crazy	p. 282
Jack Johnson	p. 284
Rosa	p. 299
Contributors	p. 300
Credits	p. 307
Publications	p. 311
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