This feisty, sensuous, and thought-provoking collection of poetry from Opal Palmer Adisa includes powerful poems about the solidarity of women, the female elders of the poet's own family, and the desire for male difference--including the benefits of having a younger lover. In these poems there is no gap between the historical, the political, and the personal, all are defined by the presence or absence of the freedom to enjoy the fruits of life. Whether writing about history, family, black lives, love, or sexual passion, Opal Palmer Adisa has an acute eye for the contraries of experience. A number of poems exhibit a witty dance between food and sexuality--in one poem drinking coconut water becomes a sexual act, while in another, the male body is eroticized metaphorically in terms of a coconut palm. But within this focus on the physical, there is also a keen sense of the oppression of the female body. In her poem "Bumbu Clat," for example, she explores the deformation of a word that originally signified sisterhood to become part of the most misogynist curses in Jamaican society.

Opal Palmer Adisa employs the modes of autobiography, dramatic monologues, lyrical observations, encomiums, prose poems and prophetic rants in a collection that enacts the construction of a sense of identity whose dimensions encompass a Rastafarian sense of inner 'i-ness', gender, race, geography, the spiritual, the social and the political. In several poems, Palmer speaks through the voices of iconic historical figures such as Phyllis Wheatley, who after the process of cultural loss and enforced imitation finds her own voice, or a ghostly Nat Turner who speaks as an invisible presence in the white world storing away his knowledge of that world to use the next time round. There are contemporary icons, too, such as the late Audrey Lorde, Barbara Christian and June Jordan, strong women who are held up as models of writers committed to the responsibility of speaking out, of pursuing beauty in their writing and personal relationships, of supporting community and fighting injustice. Palmer speaks more directly of self in poems that explore the experience of being a Black person in the world of Oakland, poems which range from a pained but empathetic response to the racial transformations of Michael Jackson, her experience of Black male chauvinism in the classroom and a moving account of the senility of a beloved grandmother. The empathy in Opal Palmer Adisa's work is nowhere more clearly seen than in "Ancestry", a poem that rejects the customary practice of choosing only the past's heroes to relate to, embracing both rebels and betrayers, fighters and the acquiescent: 'i claim all of them/ and you who turned against us/ and led them to our secret place.../ i claim you aunt jemima/ and uncle tom.../ we are all one family...' Then, almost at the end of the collection, comes a poem called "Beyond the Frame" that in its oblique but inescapable images of childhood sexual abuse, suddenly begins to suggest what kind of act of will has gone into the construction of an 'I' who is 'an incisor gnawing my way.'

Set primarily in the Bay Area of California, this compelling tale of human intent and divine manipulation touches upon the very inherent aspects of love, betrayal, madness, and reconciliation, all within the framework of the Yoruba belief system. Two modern, urban professionals--fundamentally unsuited to one another, aside from a powerful sexual chemistry--traverse life to the point of reaching the crossroads of divorce many years later. Dancing between the drama that unfolds between protagonists Crystal and Donald and the mirrored fantasy world of the Orishas where every human act has a spiritual ramification, this frank and intimate story revels in the multiple dimensions of the heart, mind, and soul.

A wide-ranging anthology of poetry, short fiction, and critical essays designed to generate thought about what is still a conflicted area of Caribbean literature and culture, this revealing, in-depth examination explores the many facets of the erotic in contemporary Caribbean literature--from desire; the psychology of abusive relationships; the role of fantasy; and issues of infidelity, lust, rape, self-respect, self-love, and child-birth. This anthology also discusses the Caribbean frameworks of sexuality as a cultural construct, from the role of "machismo," homophobia, and Protestant-fundamentalist sexual ideologies as specific forms of denial and hostility to the open expression of sexual desire. The essays then extend the book's scope beyond literature and consider the impact of the erotic upon other aspects of Caribbean life, ranging from song lyrics to the general issues of female empowerment in Caribbean societies. Featuring the work of well-known writers such as Nalo Hopkins, Colin Channer, Kwame Dawes and the work of many fresh new talents such as Obediah Michael Smith, Christian Campbell, and Tiphanie Yanique, this anthology aims to create a new framework in which the full spectrum of the erotic in Caribbean literature and life can be freely explored.

The stories in this collection move the heart and the head. They are told by an old Jamaican woman about the community that has grown up around her, the village's first inhabitant. They concern the mystery that is men: men of beauty who are as lilies of the field, men who are afraid of and despise women, brutal men who prey on women, men who are searching for their feminine side, men who have lost themselves, men trapped in sexual and religious guilt. The seven stories are structured around the wise sayings, concerning the nature of judgment, divine, but mostly human, that she remembers as her grandfather's principle legacy to her. But the stories are far from illustrative tracts for the sayings - their starting points - but free-flowing narratives that explore all the complexity of life. Again, in focusing on men, the sociological truth of Jamaican life - that many men are absentee fathers; that many boys are brought up only by their mothers - is also only a starting point for a series of sensitive and imaginative explorations of the male psyche. Above all the collection is in love with telling stories - stories within stories, the reworkings of Jamaican folktales, tall tales and myths. There is a severity about the stories in the sense that actions and inactions have consequences that cannot be evaded, but there is always some possibility of change to be found by those who look for it. Jeremiah has been driven to a state of frozen, guilty isolation by the brutality his mother has visited on him as a vicarious punishment for the sins of his father. But even he comes to realise that 'He will not be his father. He will not be his mother. He will be himself despite the memories crowding in.' These are not judgmental stories by a woman about men. Responsibility is never only on one side. There is love and understanding for the characters in these stories - love that is tough, provocative and demanding of attention, but love none the less. As Jeremiah discovers, 'Allow thyself grace and blessings will follow.'

"4-Headed Woman" is a journey into and through womanhood--from preadolescence through menopause--and an exploration of women's relations with one another. The poems employ female domestic imagery, manifest in the titles in the book's first section, which name different types of breads found throughout the world--from coconut to pita. Yet many of these poems are sparse and abstract in their trajectory. The poems in the second section focus specifically on menses, weaving together biological, folk, and cultural aspects in a humorous tone. The third section, "Graffiti Poem," comprises poems centered around college restrooms, which Adisa sees as a site of communication--through graffiti among other means--for students on a wide variety of social-sexual issues. In "4-Headed Woman, " Adisa bravely explores and uncovers taboos about womanhood in a controlled and at times lyrical style laced with humor.