God is Not an American - Softcover

Jessica Care Moore

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0965830861 ISBN 13: 9780965830867

Publisher: Moore Black Press, 2009

Synopsis

In the labyrinth of Moore's prose and poetry, the blues force is synonymous with the Derridean trace in the way in which the language transverses celestial realms to reclaim or to re-contextualize God in an image that does not reflect the sensibilities and patriarchal attitudes of the Western world. God Is Not An American summons the spirits of the androgynous Gods written out of theological and scholarly texts. The book depicts the complexities of God. In the text, Moore performs ritual and praise song to African and Native American deities of love, beauty, intimacy, fertility and motherhood that have been sacrificed for the Gods of War and Power. Moreover, Moore s poetry serves as libation to her ancestors of Native American, African, and Irish descent whose blood is the mortar that has built the foundation of America but has been largely trivialized or ignored by the dominant culture. Hence, God Is Not An American and will not become an American until America wholeheartedly embraces the amalgamation of cultures that have contributed to her greatness. With her latest collection of poetry, God is not an American; Jessica Care Moore has ascended to a new zenith in her career as a professional poet. Similar to Ralph Ellison s Invisible Man and Gayl Jones Corregidora, Moore s fuses cultural memory, black American musicality and traditional African American literary traditions to broaden the parameters of contemporary black poetry. Influenced by the poets of the Black Arts Movement such as Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, and Lucille Clifton. from the Afterword by Jessie Adolph

About this title

About the Author:

jessica Care moore is an internationally recognized poet, playwright and performance artist. She is the author of three plays, The Revolutions in the Ladies Room, Alphaphobia and her forthcoming multi media show, God is Not an American. She is the CEO of Moore Black Press, and is the author of The Words Don t Fit in My Mouth, The Alphabet Verses The Ghetto and God is Not an American. She has performed her work all over the world, including South Africa, France, and Germany. She is an Apollo Legend and an award winning book publisher. Her house has published Saul Williams, Danny Simmons, asha bandele, Etan Thomas and others. Her work has been widely published by many mainstream publishing houses, and she is most proud of being the youngest poet featured in the Prentice Hall s Anthology of African American Women Writers. She is one of the returning stars of HBO's Russell Simmons Def Poetry, and Hosted and Executive Produced her own show, SPOKEN, directed by Robert Townsend on the Black Family Channel. God is Not an American is her third release.

Review:

jessica Care moore writes that she writes to remind herself that she is a writer. Yet her writing has always leaped from the page like a healthy compulsion. To read her work is to understand that there are writer's who do so for their very survival; to cope, to process, to keep from killing. (To see her perform her work is another experience altogether---her powerful, sometimes rapid delivery can feel like a shower of bombs). She writes about the poet's diary as a time capsule for others to find and rewind, imagining that she may one day be torn from her page but with jessica there is no distance between who she is and her page, her work. Any future excavation of her work would likely summon her fire-throwing ghost itself. She breathes and bleeds for her poems, and we are all made anew by her sacrifice. --dream hampton, filmmaker, journalist

"I pray your voice is never bought, owned, silenced, censored, dimmed" --Ernie Paniccioli, Legendary Hip Hop Photographer

Jessica Care Moore's poems-fearless, resilient words with such real muscle-have continually spoken to and helped define a generation of urbanistas and our brothers, lovers, Daddies, cousins and homies. Once again she does not disappont. With God is Not an American she pushes us, pulls us, coaxes and calls us along with her on the rides of our lives: the rough, smooth, sexy, ugly, beautiful, rich, impoverished, kind and mean rides. Here she reminds us of the absolute power of and need for authenticity in any creative process. And I, for one, am both ever grateful and more, renewed. --asha bandele, author, poet, The Subtle Art of Breathing

About this edition

• Publisher: Moore Black Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0965830861
• ISBN 13: 9780965830867
• Binding: Perfect Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200
• Editor: Chantay Leonard
• Illustrator: Mike Chester