The Killer Will Remain Free: On Pat Parker and the Poetics of Madness

J Lesbian Stud. 2015;19(3):379-83. doi: 10.1080/10894160.2015.1028281.

Abstract

Poet and scholar Kazim Ali reads Pat Parker's Movement in Black intimately, one poet to another, uncovering the shadow-fact of the lives of most people of color: not only the anger that is somehow sublimated into every part of our lives but also the issue that carrying this feeling around has on our mental health itself-that "anger" and "madness" might have sources in one another. Ali concludes that Parker offers a brutal and clear-eyed and ultimately hopeful assessment of the conditions that were faced at the time, and even now, by communities of color.

Keywords: Audre Lorde; Ferguson; Jonestown; Pat Parker; Priscilla Ford; mental health.

Publication types

  • Biography
  • Historical Article

MeSH terms

  • Black People / history*
  • Cultural Characteristics
  • Female
  • Feminism / history*
  • History, 20th Century
  • Homosexuality, Female / history*
  • Humans
  • Mentally Ill Persons / history*
  • Poetry as Topic / history*
  • Social Perception
  • United States
  • Women's Rights / history*

Personal name as subject

  • Pat Parker