Books by Jacquese Armstrong

Blues Legacy is a collection of poems inspired by and celebrating various genres of African American music. The poet's voice is stark and clear; her lines are uncompromisingly lean and powerful, evoking the deepest, tenacious strains of African American political resistance and endurance. As the poetry moves along in familiar, everyday images, the poet peels back outer layers of experience to reveal the tender, vulnerable, striving energy of a people. Blues Legacy refers, then, to a revered music heritage, yes, but also to a way of life fashioned over centuries, characterized by the rhythms of perseverance, self-determination, and affirmation of beauty that have kept the people and their culture alive and evolving. While the poet honors this ancestral past, she also points to the future, appealing to African American women especially to empower themselves, and step confidently into their roles as community torchbearers.