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    Captivity
    Captivity
    Captivity
    Ebook85 pages31 minutes

    Captivity

    By Toi Derricotte

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    What are the forces that cause us to strike out and harm each other? Captivity explores the way in which the individual is held hostage by society; how the forces of racism, sexism, and classism frequently express themselves as violence within the family. The book also explores a deeper captivity, like the Jews in Egypt yearning for the Promised Land, the soul trapped in exile from God.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherUniversity of Pittsburgh Press
    Release dateNov 15, 1989
    ISBN9780822978510
    Captivity

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      Book preview

      Captivity - Toi Derricotte

      CAPTIVITY

      TOI DERRICOTTE

      University of Pittsburgh Press

      Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, Pa. 15261

      Copyright © 1989, Toi Derricotte

      All rights reserved

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      Printed on acid-free paper

      10 9 8 7 6 5

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Derricotte, Toi, 1941–

        Captivity / Toi Derricotte.

          p.      cm—(Pitt poetry series)

        ISBN 0-8229-3628-3.—ISBN 0-8229-5422-2 (pbk.)

        I. Title          II. Series.

      PS3554.E73C37    1989

      811'.54—dc20

      89-31840

      CIP

      The author and publisher wish to express their grateful acknowledgment to the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared: American Poetry Review (Touching/Not Touching: My Mother); The Beloit Poetry Journal (Tiedown); The Black Scholar (The Furious Boy); Callaloo (Fears of the Eighth Grade, Hamtramck: The Polish Women, Letter to Miss Glazer, and A Note on My Son's Face); The Caribbean Writer (The Choice and Plaid Pants); Footwork Magazine (Stuck); Ironwood (The Friendship); The Massachusetts Review (Blackbottom and The Struggle); Michigan Quarterly Review (Aerial Photographs Before the Atomic Bomb); New England Review and Bread Loaf Quarterly (Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing); New Letters (Books); Open Places (Poem for My Father); Painted Bride Quarterly (Squeaky Bed); Pequod (The Promise and Saturday Night); Poetry East (Before Making Love, My Father Still Sleeping After Surgery, and The Polishers of Brass); U.S. 1 Worksheets (Allen Ginsberg); and Woman Poet: The East (The Testimony of Sister Maureen).

      The Good Old Dog and On Stopping Late in the Afternoon for Steamed Dumplings first appeared in An Introduction to Poetry, 3rd ed., ed. Louis Simpson (St. Martin's Press, 1986).

      The writing of these poems was aided by a fellowship from The National Endowment for the Arts and a grant from the Maryland State Arts Council.

      ISBN-13: 978-0-8229-7851-0 (electronic)

      The publication of this book is supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington, D.C., a Federal agency, and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.

      For my family

      "[According to] the legend of the Lamed Vav Zaddikin…there are people in the world who absorb the suffering and the evil. They don't even know that this is what they are doing but because of their existence, the world continues. The problem with this role is that, almost invariably, they are consumed by it."

      —Jerome Groopman, M.D., The Washington Post

      "But even when I am at a loss to define

      the essence of freedom

      I know full well the meaning

      of captivity."

             —Adam Zagajewski

                Translated by Antony Graham

      Contents

      I. Blackbottom

      The Minks

      Blackbottom

      Poem for

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