new Release
I Am the Fire
I Am the Fire is a collection of poetry for women of color who aspire to live a life beyond generational poverty.
The emotionally charged poetry and essays flow together into a story that challenges the reader to tap into their vulnerability to find their inner strength.
It is an intimate voyeuristic view of a life, but it is also a story from the perspective of many women of color who are raised in urban poverty. Many poems confront controversial subjects unapologetically such as racism, depression, and addiction.
While the poems flow over traumatic situations, this book is not a celebration of victimhood. This is a book about overcoming trauma and tribulations.
I Am the Fire was written for ambitious young women who crave to experience a life beyond scarcity and survival.
For all of my sisters, you are not alone in your struggles. Together, we rise above the suppression caused by the deficiencies within our societal systems to become more than we ever thought possible.
We are the fire.
Published IN
Blog & Poetry Cafe
Visit the Wordsmith Blog & Poetry Cafe. Alethea believes in starting the day with inspiration and nothing is more inspiring to her than poetry.
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Alethea Jimison
About the author
When I was a teenager, I asked my mother for my birth certificate so that I could get a copy of it for my first job. I was confused because the field that indicated my race said “red.”
I asked my mom, “why is my race red?”
She smirked at me in wry humor as she remembered the night that she gave birth to me. You see, my mother is white and Native American and my father is black. The nurse was a racist woman who looked at my mother and father in disdain as she completed the questionnaire for my birth certificate.
“What color do you want to put down for your daughter?” she asked with an uncontrolled curl of her lip. My mother glared at her. She paused as she looked at my still red face and said to her haughtily, “she’s red.”
The nurse put my race as red as an act of sarcastic defiance.
Growing up as a biracial child, I realized really young that the majority of dolls were blond haired and blue eyed. Most of the books I read told stories about Caucasian lives. At first, I was irritated and felt underrepresented.
I remember venting online about the fact that I Googled “beautiful women” and all of the images I saw were of white women. A friend sent me statistics about the fact that the majority of people in the US were in fact white. He also shamelessly told me, if I wanted representation, then I needed to learn how to represent myself.
I was furious that this blond-haired, blue-eyed man that I called my friend told me that I was being sensitive to a non-racial issue when statistics were applied. I told him, “You don’t understand, because you’ve never been underrepresented.”
I wasn’t upset for long because I realized he was right. Who was I expecting to make books or movies about us? Who was I expecting to create more minority-owned businesses? Who was I expecting to make poetry about our stories?
It has to be us. If we want to see, hear, or read more art, music and literature about our experiences. Then we need to represent ourselves.
I will write many books. Romance books, sci-fi books and non-fiction. One thing I can promise you is that I will represent the diversity of color that we are as the human race.