The latest collection from award-winning poet Vievee Francis, The
Shared World imagines the ideas and ideals and spaces of the Black
woman. The book delves into inherited memories and restrictions between
families, lovers, and strangers and the perception and inconvenient
truth of Black woman as mother--with or without child. Francis
challenges the ways in which Black women are often dismissed while
expected to be nurturing. This raw assemblage of poetic narratives
stares down the oppressors from within and writes a new language in the
art of taking back the body and the memory. These poetic narratives are
brutal in their lyrical blows but tender with the bruised history left
behind. "You can't stop this / song," she writes. "More hands than yours
have closed / around my throat."
Francis's lyric gifts are on full display as she probes self-discovery,
history, intimacy, and violence. Her voice encompasses humor and
gravity, enigma and revelation. What emerges is a realm of intertwined
experiences. "The secret to knowing the secret is to speak," she
concludes, "but we too often tell / the stories of no matter and avoid
the one story that does matter. / In truth, we are bound by one story,
so you'd think by now / we'd tell it, at least to each other."
