Niama L. Williams, PH.D. - Norristown, PA |
 | Steven
by Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D.
Dr. Niama Williams' Steven is a psychological triumph. This long overdue Song of Survival, punctuated by the cataclysmic overtures of epiphany, minimalist agreement, and happenstance, is proof that the arrival of the truth does not always come via verbal messenger. From the beginning with "Schindler's List," Dr. Williams asks the film’s director to explain, “robbing a people of their origins." She poignantly points out that Middle Passage descendants live without a traceable identity and unlike the majority, “…cannot fabricate what was deliberately stamped out of existence." Dr. Williams' text provides a tracing of the indelible markings each of us makes on the other, and on the collective consciousness of American society. |  | The Journey
by Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D.
What does it mean to be young, Black, female, intelligent, gifted with second sight, on your way to a Ph.D. and in love for the first time? The Journey presents us with exactly this young woman. The pivotal question becomes is she sane and he deceitful, or has she lost her mind? The answer is both. Not an easy, cohesive ride, the narrative thread of an African American female mystic falling deeply in love with a white psychiatrist is complicated by a gently suggested history of abuse, graduate school, and the subtle racism of still largely white academia. The Journey strokes the American psyche from within a very personal story of love and vision: she is in love; he is not, but he leads her in a merry dance, never quite revealing what emotion lies behind his warm brown eyes. |  | Famous Faces
by Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D.
Chris Abani. Barry Manilow. Wynton Marsalis. Jerry Quickley. Jody Kuykendall. The already famous and the one on her way up. Articles in the newspaper, paparazzi bait, sought out for the alumni newsletter, for international halls of fame, for Pulitzers, Emmys, Grammys; recipients of some, winners of many. But what of the poet, toiling away in her room, alone, who watches, understands, yet never feels a part of their world? What of the poet who watches their performances, sees beneath their words, their music, imagines the pain that created the art, uses her understanding to convince herself to, yes, live one more day, but that one day, that particular day, makes another choice? |  | SOJOURN IN CALIDIA
by Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D.
She's on the run and she doesn't quite know who is pursuing. Is it the man with the unrecognizable face? The boy with the eyes that terrify? The man dressed as a campesino who doubles as The Interrogator's assistant? Who IS pursuing Cassie Daniels and what is her real mission in Calido? Sojourn in Calidia takes us through urban landscape, steamy jungle and a variety of human consciousnesses--some of which we hope never to see again--as we tease out this young Black woman's journey in a land not of her birth but definitely of her spirit. |  | Black Poetic Feminism: The Imagination of Toi Derricotte
by Niama Leslie Williams, Ph.D.
Sexual abuse happens. Domestic violence happens. We know it happens. We have child protective services. We watch Law and Order: SVU. We are surrounded by sex in our media, and we are surrounded by sexual violence in our media. And yet I have turned to the work of Toi Derricotte because we are not surrounded by sexual violence in our literary criticism, because we are not discussing sexual violence in our college classrooms, because the work of a poet like Derricotte, a poet who reveals the long, difficult trajectory of the emergence of voice, of the emergence of a healthy, vibrant, bisexual self, is largely ignored by those of us in the academy who contribute articles to that grand behemoth otherwise known as the Modern Language Association's International Bibliography. The Black poetic feminism of Toi Derricotte works on this silence in a variety of ways. Read on, and perhaps learn a great deal from her journey. |
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