She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (Wesleyan Poetry) - Softcover

Philip, M. NourbeSe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0819575674 ISBN 13: 9780819575678

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press, 2015

Brilliant, lyrical, and passionate, this collection from the acclaimed poet M. NourbeSe Philip is an extended jazz riff running along the themes of language, racism, colonialism, and exile. In this groundbreaking collection, Philip defiantly challenges and resoundingly overthrows the silencing of black women through appropriation of language, offering no less than superb poetry resonant with beauty and strength. She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks was originally published in 1989 and won the Casa de Las Americas Prize. This new Wesleyan edition includes a foreword by Evie Shockley. An online reader's companion will be available at http://nourbesephilip.site.wesleyan.edu.

Review:

"[She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks] tries to catch the deadly dictionary in the act of definition. Philip snatches the language of (Greek) myth, (colonial) law, (English) grammar book, and (Christian) catechism with all its 'eucharistic contradictions' to perform the many ways the African experience in the New World has been formed and deformed by language systems hostile to its flourishing."--Carina del Velle Schorske, Boston Review

"Twenty years before Philip wrote Zong!, she wrote She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks. Every golden age is a renaissance--while at the same time remembering, with pleasure, the way the route of this masterwork has so far bypassed both Europe and the United States. She Tries Her Tongue --the first manuscript of a poet born in Tobago [now living] in Canada--came into the world as the winner of Cuba's prestigious Casa de Las Américas prize."--Zinzi Clemmons, Literary Hub

"Brilliant, lyrical, and passionate, this collection from the author of Zong!--originally published in 1989 and the winner of the Casa de Las Americas Prize...an extended jazz riff running along the themes of Language, racism, colonialism, and exile."--Publishers Weekly

"NourbeSe Philip insists on the impossibility of forgetting what has been lost even as we move into uncertain futures--an insistence that gestures toward the totality of a diasporic culture, and this a return of the dispersed to a new home. In the interim She Tried Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks is a fully realized, moving paean to that possibility."--Tyrone Williams, Chicago Review

"At every turn, she interrogates colonial language culture. Through repeating phrases with minor alterations, Philip brings us in on the ambivalent performance of language cultures across bodies"--Joseph Houlihan, Entropy

About the Author:

M. NourbeSe Philip is a poet, essayist, novelist, and playwright who was born in Tobago, in the twin island state of Trinidad and Tobago, and now lives in Toronto. She is the author of four books of poetry, including Zong!, a novel, and three collections of essays. EVIE SHOCKLEY is an associate professor of English at Rutgers University, and author of the new black, winner of the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry

• Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0819575674
• ISBN 13: 9780819575678
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 110