Fear Not the Fall: Poems and a Two-Act Drama (Conecuh Series) - Softcover

In three dozen poems and a two-act play, MacArthur Fellow Billie Jean Young honors the tradition of struggle, resistance, and survival common to generations of women descended from African slaves. The tradition she dramatizes in her acclaimed portrayal of Fannie Lou Hamer (here for the first time in book form)-the tradition of making a way out of no way-is the same tradition she celebrates in remembering her mother’s “rub-board hands.” Her poetry also reveals the often hidden costs of resistance. In this collection Young celebrates her personhood as well as her African American womanhood and the power of self-creation and re-creation in the face of personal rejection, abuse, systematic exploitation and oppression. Organized chronologically, her poems may be read as road markers from her life’s journey. For Young, the road is not a freeway; it is not even always paved. It is, however, a familiar path and one many of us can enter.

Billie Jean Young lives in Pennington, Alabama, her hometown. She was educated in Choctaw County schools and holds degrees from Selma University, Judson College, and Samford University's Cumberland School of Law. A former Jackson State University Assistant Professor of Speech and Dramatic Art, she teaches at Mississippi State University Meridian campus. From the late 1960s into the early '90s, she was a national and international leader in development opportunities for rural women, especially African Americans. She co-founded and directed the Southern Rural Women's Network (SRWN) before writing and producing her best known work: Fannie Lou Hamer: This Little Light..., a one-woman play based on the life of the Mississippi Delta freedom fighter and human rights activist. In recognition of her work in preserving the history of African American women through the play and for her organizing work through the SRWN, Young was named a 1984 MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.