{"title":"Linda Susan Jackson","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"what-yellow-sounds-like-book-linda-susan-jackson-9781882688333","title":"What Yellow Sounds Like","description":"What is most compelling about Linda Susan Jackson's debut collection of poems, \"\"What Yellow Sounds Like\"\", is the extraordinary self-possession of its young female narrator as she seeks to answer who am I and to whom do I belong? These poems are about the process of shaping the identity of one girl who comes from \"\"a line of technicolor women\"\" who have \"\"honey\/suckle buried freely in the folds of their flesh,\"\" a girl who comes from \"\"men who bit their tongues\/ate dirt, dust and their pride, worked anywhere\"\", and could \"\"soar off the ground.\"\" The terrain of Jackson's poems is particular, perilous, loving, humorous, passionate, uncompromising, contradictory - in other words, vastly human. The language is varied and inflected with the blues, and like the blues, pulls readers in through images and details that are both concrete and symbolic. Poem after poem charts the stages of this young girl's development through her relationships with her family, her history, and the America into which she is born that is defined by race, skin color, gender, and class. The narrator develops a profound and essential connection to the legendary singer, Etta James, the \"\"canary colored blues woman\"\" and she recognizes the power in the sound of words as she recollects how Etta James \"\"churned up her roar\/to keep other women from dying.\"\" Near the end of the book, her great-grandmother tells her \"\"Everything don't need to be told. Some things must.\"\" In this moment, the narrator is empowered to decide what to tell and to tell it in her own voice. These poems celebrate the sheer will and determination of the self to seek out and find who or what it needs to grow and prosper.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50393590858001,"sku":"CIN1882688333G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1882688333.jpg?v=1763480618"},{"product_id":"truth-be-told-book-linda-susan-jackson-9781954245969","title":"Truth Be Told","description":"A stunning sophomore release, Linda Susan Jackson's newest poetry collection, \u003ci\u003eTruth be Told\u003c\/i\u003e, looks at the myriad treasures and complexities of Black womanhood by channeling an eclectic cast whose rich interactions testify to the timeless neglect of girlhood, the bond of long-term friendship and the responsibilities of authorship. Here Pecola Breedlove, the protagonist from\u0026gt;\u003ci\u003eThe Bluest Eye\u003c\/i\u003e, addresses herself directly to Toni Morrison and connects, over time and space, with Persephone, a girl herself, cycling always toward the seasons, caught between an overbearing mother, an incomprehensible father and a grooming god; Lot's wife sets the record straight about turning back; and our speaker writes to and through her lineage, memorializing her great-grandmother's distilled wisdom and others who have impacted her, such as when she writes to the great blues singer, Etta James. In a meticulous inventory of our world and its historical inheritance, Jackson makes an undaunted cartographer, mapping here: rag-wicked IED to there: t-shaped IUD, from here: the mother I longed for to  there: the mother I had. If Jackson recognizes the distance between our ideals and our reality as a kind of tragedy, she also resists despair, enjoining us to close the gap with hope for the future and to: Step here: light the fire\/ Step there: fire the cannon. Every poem is a spark struck, a cannonade hailing the resilient and enigmatic joy of language. After decades with no history, Jackson sagely celebrates, That I sing at all is a mystery. A mystery, yes, but moreover -- a blessing for those of us enthralled by her song of love. \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51059716129041,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51059719274769,"sku":"NIN9781954245969","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1954245963.jpg?v=1750965560"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-linda-susan-jackson.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}