"Tennessee Reed is a brand new star in the galaxy of our spirit--shining
for all of our people."--Simon Ortiz, author of Telling and Showing
Her
"Reed writes with clarity, wit, and wonder--and with an open-hearted
passion that disarms, refreshes, and delights."--Al Young, author of
Something About the Blues
"I'm not like them," Tennessee Reed would tell her teachers to get them
to see that the approach they used for students with "normal" brains
didn't always work for her. As it turned out, she was different in quite
a few other ways as well, including the great reserves of courage she
could call upon to fight an educational system that often defined her
disabilities as laziness or stupidity.
The daughter of writer/choreographer Carla Blank and novelist Ishmael
Reed, Tennessee was diagnosed at an early age with several
language-based learning disorders. The bottom line, the experts agreed,
was that she would never read or write. Within a few years, however, she
published her first book of poetry. By the time she was a teenager, she
was writing the text for Meredith Monk performances and traveling the
world to read her poems.
Spell Albuquerque is an inspiring memoir of one woman's struggle to
overcome racism and institutional authority and to achieve what everyone
said was impossible.
Tennessee Reed is the author of five books of poetry, including
City Beautiful, Airborne, and Electric Chocolate. She is a
graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and has a master's
degree from Mills College.
