is one of the decade's most moral poets, showing us in feverishly focused first- and third-person dramatic monologues the grim life of L.A.'s streets. It's impossible to paraphrase her colloquial, dynamic style: "where I live / the little gangsters diddy-bop through and pick up / young bitches and flirt with old ones, looking to / snatch somebody's purse or find their way into somebody's / snatch 'cause mama don't want them at home and papa / is a figment and them…
Author: Wanda Coleman · Original publisher: Black Sparrow Press (1990)
Tier 3 — Partial text + link. No text is hosted on Gary NOI. Read free: https://archive.org/details/africansleepings0000cole (Internet Archive lending copy — borrowable; IA item ID as recorded in Tranche B1: africansleepings0000cole; no hosting rights).
