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Compassion and Collaboration: Keys to Healing the African-American Health Crisis
Cave Canem African-American Poetry Fellow Releases Book on the History of African-American Health, and Humanity's Need for Justice and Healing
Bookcover |
Author - Karen S. Williams |
Detroit, MI (BlackNews.com) - Cave Canem poet, Karen S. Williams, believes that poetry is an enlightening and healing social justice tool, one that can move its readers and hearers to help eradicate the taint of the slave health deficit, health disparities experienced by Blacks due to years of explicit and implicit exposure to racism, discrimination, despair, cynicism, contempt, poverty, negative scientific and popular culture representations of them. She agrees with poet Eli Siegel when he said, 'When a person has contempt, he or she is cold to the feelings of other people. This is the beginning of all injustice, in personal lives and on a massive international scale.' She hopes that her debut collection of poetry, Elegy for a Scarred Shoulder ((ISBN: 978-0-9718214-3-9, retail $14.95) will increase individual and corporate compassion and collaborations to help correct that.
Elegy for a Scarred Shoulder will debut May 1, 2008 at free reading and booksigning at 7:00 pm in Kalman Auditorium at Oakwood Hospital and Medical Center, 18101 Oakwood Blvd in Dearborn, Michigan. Published by Willow Books, an imprint of emerging African-American literature publisher, Aquarius Press, the book was a finalist for the 2004 Naomi Long Madgett/Lotus Poetry Award.
At once raw, stunning, and hard-hitting, Elegy for a Scarred Shoulder, thoroughly grounded in historical context and moving medical research, features 42 poems based on the true stories of famous historical incidents, and figures such as African-American clergymen, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones; noted physician and blood transfusion researcher, Dr. Charles Drew; athlete and entrepreneur, Ervin "Magic" Johnson; and neurosurgeon, Dr. Benjamin Carson, among others.
Heather Buchanan-Gueringer, author and publisher of Aquarius Press, says that Elegy...is a must-have book that helps leaders in America's educational, health and medical, faith, political, and artistic communities, among others, introduce or reintroduce delicate issues of race, health and inequity, and their impact on African-Americans to their constituents.
"Williams' lyrical, fluid writing bring little-known stories to our attention, and what compelling stories these are. These poems go beyond evoking emotion and expose us to a different perspective on medical history..." notes Anna Reisman, MD, Deputy Editor of Creative Writing and Book Reviews, Journal of General Internal Medicine, Assistant Professor, Yale (University) School of Medicine.
"In Elegy for a Scarred Shoulder, Williams commits not only to the reclamation of the Black body, but also, to literary excellence through skillfully crafted elegies, epistle's and poetic verse, stimulating the imagined into the real, transferring witness into historicity. She is a bard whose lyric delivers potent poetic narrative. Here is a poet of exceptional talent," praises Randall Horton, author of The Definition of Place (Main Street Rag Press) and a Cave Canem Fellow.
"The poems in Elegy for a Scarred Shoulder are grounded in history and the realities of the human body. Williams looks at the cruelty of oppression and enslavement, but she insists on treating each character as an individual. Even when most stark, these are poems of healing" asserts Dawn McDuffie, author of Carmina Detroit (Adastra Press).
Buchanan-Gueringer also states that an "added plus about the book is that the poems are partially based on research Williams and Veronica Wilkerson Johnson, a colleague at the University of Michigan, conducted to write an article on African-American health disparities for the Harvard Health Policy Review in 2002 titled 'Eliminating African-American Health Disparity via History-based Policy.' The article, now used in college health and medical programs across the U.S. That said, Aquarius Press is the more proud to present the creative fruit of Ms. Williams' research to the American public."
"Karen S. Williams is one of the finest poets writing in Metro Detroit today. Her sensitive images and strong metaphors take her readers deep into the human experience and struggle to better understand our whole humanity and our historical achievements. She is able to take on difficult topics like race, history and medicine and translate them all into readable, contemplative moments of serious poetry..." states M.L. Liebler, author of Wide Awake in Someone Else's Dream (Wayne State University Press)
An Inkster, Michigan native, Williams is a graduate of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at The Ohio University (BSJ), Wayne State University's College of Education, and Michigan State University's Program for Bioethics, Humanities and Society, where she specialized in the history of medicine, and literature and medicine for racial and ethnic populations. A past president of the Inkster (MI) NAACP, and former minority health programs coordinator, she served as Poet in Residence for the City of Inkster, Michigan, and Chair and Senior Poetry Editor of the award-winning Detroit Writer's Guild. A Broadside Press Poet, Squaw Valley Poet, and Cave Canem African-American Poetry Fellow, her poetry, essays and fiction has been published widely.
Elegy for a Scarred Shoulder by Karen S. Williams is available online at Amazon.com or directly from Aquarius Press, P.O. Box 23096, Detroit, Michigan 48223, or at the Aquarius Press website at www.Aquariuspressbookseller.net
Karen S. Williams is available for readings, lectures, workshops, conferences, and interviews. Review kits for Elegy for a Scarred Shoulder, author photos, and more are available upon request by calling Aquarius Press Offices, 313-515-8122, or emailing Aquariuspress@sbcglobal.net.
CONTACT:
Aquarius Press Offices
313-515-8122
Aquariuspress@sbcglobal.net
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