What do you do when you are young and gifted and the world has turned its back at you? That is the wrenching question at the heart of this extraordinary novel about a seventeen-year-old street kid whose only escape is through crime—and the redemptive power of his poetry. Ballad of a Ghetto Poet tells the savage and lyrical story of a teenager caught in the brutal crossfire of poverty and violence that could send him on the collision course to the cellblock—or the grave.​ Chicko Grayson is a teenager growing up on the tough streets of Richmond, Virginia, where poverty is a life sentence, and the only way out is behind the barrel of a gun. Raised on the harsh, brutal language of the streets, Chicko hears the music of God in the poetry he writes. But God is noticeably absent when he falls in with a sly and dangerous criminal who draws Chicko and his best friends Malcolm and Junnie into the city's violent underworld of crime. Filled with the rage and pathos of the streets, eloquent in its anguished portrait of life in the forgotten corners of the South, Ballad of a Ghetto Poet delivers a modern-day interpretation of West Side Story. This is a tragic and heroic tale of desperate hope and lost chances, and of what happens when redemption comes too late.

While investigating the disappearance of a fellow agent, Kimberla Bacon, known in the FBI as the Chameleon, enters a world of prostitution, political intrigue, and corruption where she must deny her attraction to undercover agent Jacob White. Original. 15,000 first printing.

The first full-length biography of Lola Ridge, a trailblazer for women, poetry, and human rights far ahead of her time This rich and detailed account of the life and world of Lola Ridge, poet, artist, editor, and activist for the cause of women's rights, workers' rights, racial equality and social reform. From her childhood as a newly arrived Irish immigrant in the grim mining towns of New Zealand to her years as a budding poet and artist in Sydney, Australia, to her migration to America and the cities of San Francisco, Chicago, and New York. At one time considered one of the most popular poets of her day, she later fell out of critical favor due to her realistic and impassioned verse that looked head on at the major social woes of society. Moreover, her work and appearances alongside the likes of Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman, Will Durant, and other socialists and radicals put her in the line of fire not only of the police and government, but also the literary pundits who criticized her activism as being excessive and melodramatic. This lively portrait gives a veritable who's who of all the key players in the arts, literature, and radical politics of the time, in which Lola Ridge stood front and center.

Dizhur's work has been suppressed in her native Russia. The centerpiece of this collection is Dizhur's stunning narrative about Janusz Korczak, a Polish Jew who accompanied orphans into Treblinka rather than let them die alone.

A final collection of poetic works by the famed Jewish resistance fighter is comprised of pieces written in the last weeks of his life while he succumbed to cancer and are the poet's testament to a life lived with unflinching honesty and courage.

This book examines how Gwendolyn Brooks, a self-proclaimed nonreligious person, advocates adherence to Christian ideals through religious allusions in her poetry. The discussion integrates Brooks' words, biographical data, commentary by other scholars, scriptural references, and doctrinal tenets. It identifies biblical figures and events and highlights Brooks' effective use of the sermon genre, and her express parallels between Christianity and Democracy. The work opens with a biographical chapter and Brooks' comments on religion, followed by analyses of her long poems, and more than thirty of her short ones. An illuminating interview with Nora Brooks Blakely about Brooks' religious background and philosophy is included.