Day 8: CELEBRATION

PROMPT: A celebration poem

I WORK TO CELEBRATE STRUGGLE
(a found poem, quoting Toni Cade Bambara)

I do not think that literature is the primary
instrument for social transformation, but
I do think it has potency. So
I work to tell the truth about people's lives; I work
to celebrate struggle,
to applaud the tradition of struggle in our community,
to bring to center stage all those characters, just ordinary
folks on the block, who've been
waiting in the wings, characters we thought
we had to ignore because they weren't
pimp-flashy or hustler-slick or because they didn't
fit easily into previously acceptable
modes or stock types. I want to lift up some
usable truths ...

Toni Cade Bambara (b. 1939), African American fiction writer.
Black Women Writers at Work, ch. 2, by Claudia Tate (1983).