incorporate African-American expressive culture
generally. Out of this change came special issues
on black music, jazz, the black church, and theater.
In addition, the journal’s cover made full-color
use of the work of African-American visual art-
ists. In addition to the Lila Wallace grant, African
American Review has won three American Literary
Magazine Awards for editorial content and several
NEA grants, and it serves as the official publication
of the Black American Literature Division of the
Modern Language Association. In 2001, its base of
operations was moved to St. Louis University; in
2004 Joycelyn Moody became editor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bayliss, John F. “Editorial,” Negro American Literature
Forum 1, no. 1 (1967): 1.
Keith Byerman
Ai (Florence Anthony) (1947– )
Florence Anthony’s discovery of the poet within
herself began, she believes, at her birth on Oc-
tober 21, 1947, in Albany, Texas. While Florence
Anthony was aware of the unique cultural back-
ground she inherited from her African-American,
Choctaw, Irish, Dutch, and Southern Cheyenne
mother, she was 26 when she learned about her
Japanese father. As a result of this discovery and
her lack of affinity with either African-American
or white students at her integrated Catholic grade
school, Florence Anthony became Ai, which means
“love” in Japanese. To pursue her interest in and
validate her newfound heritage, Ai earned her B.A.
in Japanese from the University of Arizona in 1964
and developed her professional interest in poetry.
In 1971, she earned an M.F.A. from the University
of California at Irvine.
In her first collection of poems, Cruelty (1972),
Ai introduced the style, a series of dramatic mono-
logues, that continues to dominate her work.
Equally important, however, are her diverse speak-
ers, who deal with themes and subjects ranging
from abortion to domestic violence, generally con-
sidered social taboos. The one thing these speak-
ers have in common is their lower-class status and
struggle for survival. Ai’s honest portrayal of these
personas and their thoughts often forces readers
into the uncomfortable position of relating with
the child abuser, the battered wife, or the father of
an aborted child. Despite the harsh criticism she
received for the violent nature and language of her
work, Ai has not wavered from her use of graphic
representations of violence and her focus on the
body in her work for more than 20 years and seven
texts.
Although similar to Cruelty in style, specifically
in its use of dramatic monologues, Ai’s second
collection of poems, Killing Floor (1973), features
disparate narrators. Instead of focusing on the
voiceless, poverty-stricken, and socially ousted,
Killing Floor features speakers who are popular
cultural and historical icons: Marilyn Monroe,
Leon Trotsky, and Ira Hayes. Other characters—a
son who must deal with a senile father, a murder-
ous 14-year-old boy, and a crazy Indian bride—
have unusual qualities that color their experience
and portrayals. Ai’s use of genocide, cannibalism,
necrophilia, and murder to connect private evils
with public degradation continues in her next
collection, Sin (1986). The religious overtone of
the title draws together the diverse cast of speak-
ers, ranging from John F. Kennedy to an unnamed
priest, as each tries to justify his previous actions,
rooted in a desire for power, and the need to es-
cape the guilt associated with “sin.” Viewed as a
chorus, the speakers in Sin represent Ai’s critique
of the many institutions that she believes domi-
nate society, especially religion and politics. In Fate
(1991) and Greed (1993), Ai completes her unde-
clared objective of progressing from giving voice
to the unnamed to speaking for the idols of Ameri-
can culture. However, the characters in these two
collections, Elvis Presley, James Dean, and Jimmy
Hoffa, do not speak as individuals; instead, they
become the collective representation of American
values.
While Ai’s poetry has often earned harsh criti-
cism, her plain, direct style has brought her acco-
lades. Aside from winning the Bunting Fellowship,
an American Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellow-
ship, and the Lamont Prize, Ai’s Vice: New and Se-
lected Poems (1999) won the sought-after NationalAi 7