“These poems are about revolutionaries and Lovers; and about the loss of compassion, trust and the ability to expand in love that marks the end of hopeful strategy. Whether in love or revolution. They are also about (and for) those few embattled souls who remain painfully committed to beauty and love even while facing the firing squad.
“Humbly for my heroes, heroines, and friends of early SNCC . . . And for the Mississippi Delta legend of Bob Moses. And for Winson Hudson and Fanny Lou Hamer . . . And for my friend Charles Merrill, the artist who paints skies. —Alice Walker
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In These Dissenting Times
To acknowledge our ancestors means
we are aware that we did not make
ourselves, that the line stretches
all the way back, perhaps, to God; or
to Gods. We remember them because it
is an easy thing to forget: that we
are not the first to suffer, rebel,
fight, love and die. The grace with
which we embrace life, in spite of
the pain, the sorrows, is always
a measure of what has gone before.
by Alice Walker
from Her Blue Body Everything We Know
Harvest Books, 1991