Alexis De Veaux

It's not my nature to read a book a second time. It's very rare that I will want to go back and read one again, and that has always been with books that have been so big and full of information that I wanted to make sure I had absorbed it all. This book is quite slender, and yet, it reveals itself in very intricate and nuanced ways, hiding that complexity from the reader at first, and eventually getting you hooked on it and craving more. I need to go back and take this ride again. What is it about? Why would I spoil your fun and tell you? Let's just say it's about living between possibilities.… (mehr)

This is a fictional, fantasy book. I did not like it very much because it was boring and the pictures were hand-drawn using only a black ink pen. There was no color, so I had a hard time staying interested. It is about a boy who has magical hair. He gets made fun of because it looks different and does strange things. It giggles when he talks, roars when he walk, and is even sprouts wings. One day, he crosses the big roads and finds several other people with enchanted hair like his, and he finally feels like he fits in. I think the reading level of this book is second grade because the words are not that difficult, yet it is not too easy. The curricular connections are: hair, difference, "sticks and stones might hurt your bones, but ugly words shall never harm you", and individuality.… (mehr)

This is the first biography of Audre Lorde, the iconic lesbian feminist poet who died of breast cancer in 1992. De Veaux, chair of the Women’s Studies Department at the University of Buffalo (SUNY) has written a thorough and engaging account of Lorde’s development as a theorist and poet, divided into two parts, before and after her diagnosis with breast cancer in 1977. Describing her decision to end the biography on Lorde’s move to St Croix six years before her death, De Vreaux sums up her life as a quest for a spiritual homeland. My major problem with this book is that its political agenda, with its emphasis on race and gender issues, eclipses the other elements; most regrettably character description. Family, friends, fellow students and activists are all described in terms of their effect on Lordes’ growing awareness of her racial, gender and sexual identity and self-identification, but otherwise have little presence. A great set text for a course on the history of contemporary black American feminist theory – but not an entirely successful biography.… (mehr)

Lorde's life had many similarities to Neruda's. She, too, came from a family full of secrets that included half-siblings she didn't know about until late in life; her relationships--with both men and women--were marked by loyalty rather than fidelity; and she, too, suffered from disappointment in the political arena, most notably from the persistence of racism in the women's movement.

De Veaux divides the book into two sections: life before Lorde was diagnosed with the cancer that eventually killed her, and life after. It suffers slightly from an overly academic style--although the notes are extremely useful, there's information in them that would serve readers better if it were fully developed in the text. De Veaux makes clear that, although many may remember Lorde primarily as a political activist and feminist theorist--the author of the groundbreaking essay "The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House," among others--her identity as a poet took priority. While De Veaux addresses the poems' development, this is not necessarily a literary biography; however, access to Lorde's papers and to interviews with close friends and family members certainly opens up her life in detail.

These are well-written and exhaustive examinations of remarkable lives, perhaps most useful for their revelation that art and politics are not strange bedfellows at all.

http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/Content?oid=oid%3A32835… (mehr)