Description
Poetry. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies. CARGO offers an intimate examination of the contemporary African American experience. These semi-autobiographical poems of love, loss, and longing, explore the impact of a racialized legacy in shaping one woman's coming of age in the United States, Colombia, and Germany. Rather than tell a straight-forward chronological narrative, each individual poem stitches together disparate experiences so that the lines of each poem resonate against each other in meaningful and evocative ways. Together, these poems work as a book-length meditation on intersecting and intertwining identities of race, class, and nation. Tonally and thematically, CARGO shares a legacy with the African American blues, which expresses communal grief and love as embodied by the experiences of an individual. Ultimately, CARGO emphasizes the necessity of pride, self-definition, and self-determination as expressed in one woman's journey.
Author Bio
The daughter of an African American army soldier, Pia Deas grew up alternately in Germany, the southern United States, and the mid west. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the oldest degree- granting historically black college in the United States. Currently, she teaches courses in contemporary African American literature and creative writing. She received her BA in Spanish from Earlham College, an MA in Poetry from Temple University, and a PhD in English from Penn State University. Her honors include fellowships at Cave Canem and Naropa. She currently resides in Philadelphia.
Author City: PHILADELPHIA, PA USA