Though her books have earned her the National
Book Award for Poetry in 2000 and an appoint-
ment to the previously all-white board of chancel-
lors of the Academy of American Poets in 1999,
Clifton is a voice speaking from, and for, the racial
and social margins of American society. Her writ-
ing reveals her strong social conscience and broad
awareness of human suffering. Blackness and fe-
maleness are at one with her art’s humanity. Clif-
ton asks us to see individual experience, race, and
gender not as qualifiers limiting a person’s ability
to relate to others but as revelations of selfhood
that open up new possibilities of communication,
communion, and collective action.
The new poems in Blessing the Boats: New and
Selected Poems, 1988–2000 mourn the cruelties
that humans inflict on one another and decry the
violent legacy that today’s children have inherited
from their elders. Preoccupied with mortality, the
persona Clifton adopts in these poems is neverthe-
less drawn to the wondrous possibilities that life
holds for each person, each generation. Her poems
make it clear that she still believes in the restorative
power of love, though she acknowledges, in her in-
dictments of social injustice, that love for one’s fel-
low humans is often in woefully short supply.
Hilary HolladayColeman, Wanda (1946– )
Born Wanda Evans to George and Lewana Evans
in Watts, and raised in South Central Los Ange-
les, California, Coleman remains today an impor-
tant literary and the existential voice of this West
Coast community, specifically in relation to the
socioeconomic and political uprisings associated
with this area: the Watts Revolt (1965), which she
experienced first hand as a young adult, and the
south central Los Angeles rebellion (1992), a con-
flagration that took place after the Rodney King
verdict was announced. Influenced by MAULANA
KARENGA’s nationalist Us Organization, Coleman
began writing poetry at age 15, embracing and
validating the functional purpose of art prescribed
in Karenga’s Kawaida theory of social change for
African-American life and culture. Identifying in
an interview her desire to write, Coleman added,
“And through writing control, destroy, and cre-
ate social institutions. I want to wield the power
that belongs to the pen,” affirming, on the one
hand, her dedication to “the cause” and the politi-
cal principles of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT, while
echoing on the other hand, RICHARD WRIGHT in
BLACK BOY. After attending college for two years,
Coleman left to serve as writer-in-residence at Stu-
dio Watts from 1968 to 1969. In addition to work-
ing as a recruiter for Peace Corps/VISTA, Coleman
was a staff writer for NBC’s Days of Our Lives, win-
ning, in 1976, an Emmy Award for best writing in
a daytime drama.
Coleman, an eclectic poet, short story writer,
and performer, is the author of one novel, Mambo
Hips and Make Believe (1999), and several collec-
tions of poetry and stories, including Art in the
Court of a Blue Fag (1977), Mad Dog Black Lady
(1979), Imagoes, Heavy Daughter Blues: Poems
and Stories (1987), A War of Eyes and Other Stories
(1988), Dicksboro Hotel and Other Travels (1989),
African Sleeping Sickness: Stories and Poems
(1990), and Hand Dance (1993). Coleman’s Bath-
water Wine won the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry
Prize, and her Mercurochrome: New Poems made
her a bronze-metal finalist at the National Book
Awards in 2001. Her Love-Ins with Nietzsche,
published as a chapbook, was nominated for the
Pushcart Prize (2000).
In her poetry, Coleman records and celebrates
the complex and dynamic history of African Amer-
icans found in the entire spectrum of the black
experience, encompassing everything from black
urban life and family structure, the often painful
journey from childhood to young adulthood, and
the inevitable destructiveness of racial oppres-
sion to an unabashed treatment of lesbianism, a
celebration of blackness, and the artist’s quest for
identity and form. For example, set in the 1960s,
a period dominated by African-American music
and dance (“hully gully shimmy peanut butter”),
“At the Record Hop” preserves black youth culture.
Attending a record hop held in her junior high
school gym, the speaker looks on as “bobby-soxers110 Coleman, Wanda