Reviews

from Karen Kevorkian, poet, Lizard Dreams: Judy Juanita's essay collection surveys the heady time when the Black Panther Party, "30 black men, armed to the teeth and dressed in the signature berets and leather jackets," spoke more loudly than any verbal description of the BPP ever could. The canonical phrase "off the pigs" was similarly efficient, adding to Juanita's early lessons in the effective economies of image and language, and no doubt having more than a little to do with her longstanding dedication to writing poetry. Instructed that poetry had absolutely no commodity value, she set herself to acquiring fluency in playwriting and literary fiction, to which her performed plays and published novel testify. This portrait of the artist as a young black woman sees her exposed to the coded bullshit of writing workshops and the merciless hierarchizing that occurs in any group of writers. Admirably, she asks herself what is to be learned, how her work might benefit. She refuses, with stunning clearheadedness, to personalize casual dismissals and indifference, and notes that women artists "were hard working, self-sacrificing, generous, often defiantly unhappy and did their own shitwork." She writes, "I concluded early on that being an artist was damaging to one's own life and to loved ones." The question became for her, as for so many artists, how to live a balanced life AND pursue writing. And did I mention that along the way she worked at stand-up comedy? And has considered opinions about the sexuality of black men and her lack of interest in the chick lit and gangsta lit that characterize a segment of writing by black authors? What a woman. What a life.