The Complete Works of Pat Parker includes Parker’ s poetic masterwork, Movement in Black, as well as the poetry collection Jonestown & other madness, in addition to her published essays and other prose, along with two unpublished plays and a number of previously uncollected poems.
Editor Julie R. Enszer notes, “ The breadth of creative output collected here demonstrates the seriousness of Parker’ s overall work as a writer. Beginning in 1963, when she was nineteen years old, and continuing until she died in 1989, Parker took her work as a writer seriously. Gathering as much of it as possible into a single volume invites readers to take it seriously as well.”
"Parker stayed woke to black suffering, violence against black bodies--especially those of black women--to the suffering engendered by multiple, egregious oppressions. With THE COMPLETE WORKS OF PAT PARKER, we are allowed an opportunity to historicize Pat Parker's significance to black women's literary traditions, lesbian erotics, to black queer struggles and black feminism, and to global social justice movements. She was in her time. Now, with this important text, she will be in all time to come."--Alexis De Veaux
"As the Black Lives Matter movement calls attention to the grave risks Black people have always faced and as poets and artists wrestle with the question of how to marry the political and the personal in their work, we have never needed Pat Parker's work more. It is absolutely immediate, searing, salving, saving, and necessary."--Kazim Ali
"The poetry of Pat Parker reaches out to us anew and shakes our consciousness--fiercely."--Cheryl Clarke
Poetry. Drama. California Interest. African & African American Studies. Women's Studies.
