Product Description

Nominated for an NAACP Image Award in the category of Outstanding Literary Work Poetry, Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees is a cross-generational volume of poetry, featuring the work of 50 thought provoking and inspirational women writers, lyricists and spoken word artists from diverse cultures and backgrounds. Check the Rhyme features eighteen chapters, revealing poetry that is a representation of both emerging and established poets who write on a variety of themes including: beauty and self esteem; empowerment for youth; hip hop culture; love relationships; the memory and meaning of home; the state of our society; Hurricane Katrina s impact; artistic and political contributions of legendary artists; healing from violence; family and motherhood; jazz music; Black history; and spirituality. The pages of Check the Rhyme are filled with insights, experiences and challenges of women who walk the warrior path, intending to shape the world with the passion that fuels their dreams.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1486166 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-21
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Review
Check The Rhyme weaves the life experiences of womanhood through the power of words with a hip hop twist. Here is a page turner that has a hold on the heart. --Tachelle Shamash Wilkes, Editor/Founder, Femmixx.com

Check the Rhyme is a lesson in remembering to breathe. These sister warrior writings will squeeze until you feel! -- Michelle Sewell, Editor, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology (GirlChild Press)

Check the Rhyme is a lesson in remembering to breathe. These sister warrior writings will squeeze until you feel! --Michelle Sewell, Editor, Growing Up Girl: An Anthology (GirlChild Press)

This anthology presents not only a diverse view of the world, but a diversity of poetic forms. Rather than villanize hip hop, the anthology offers new perspectives and a space for socially conscious emcees. --Feminist Review

From the Publisher
Lit Noire Publishing is proud to publish and promote the work of women writers who are striving each day to maintain their art and enlighten our world. This anthology is a work that serves as proof that this generation of women writers/poets, emcees, spoken word artists, playwrights and lyricists have important things to say about society, politics, family, pop culture, womanhood and art!

About the Author
Poet, educator, author, speaker, publisher and performance artist DuEwa M. Frazier began making her mark as a poet, in Summer 1999 when she featured at the Multi-State Poetry Slam in Philadelphia, PA. Since then DuEwa has been called a "gifted and conscious performing poet" and "one of the illest wordsmiths breathing!" Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, this young artist has featured at slam venues, colleges, festivals, public schools, museums and other institutions including: Bowery Poetry Club and the famed Nuyorican Poet's Café (NYC), University of Pennsylvania, Howard University, Legacy Bookstore & Café (St. Louis), Temple University, October Gallery (Philadelphia), Indianapolis Book Festival, Karibu Books, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and others. DuEwa earned the B.A. degree in English at Hampton University and the M.S.Ed. degree in Curriculum & Teaching at Fordham University.

As a speaker she has featured on panels relating to self-publishing and hip hop media. Her reach as a dynamic artist is also felt through literature and publishing as she is Founder/CEO of Lit Noire Publishing and the producer of Word Canvas open mic poetry events in New York City. Frazier is the author of two favorably reviewed volumes of poetry: Shedding Light From My Journeys and Stardust Tracks on a Road. She is the Editor of the 38th NAACP Image Award nominated anthology, Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets & Emcees (July 2006), featuring the work of fifty internationally/nationally known women poets from across the U.S. and abroad.

As a performer and actress, Frazier wrote and performed her first one-woman dramatic play at The Nuyorican Poet's Cafe, titled "Flash Femininity" a play which presents themes and lessons relating to: women in hip hop, community upliftment, the war in Iraq, Black women and HIV/AIDS and cultural art. In 2005 she featured in the documentary arts film "Rhyme and Reason."

Customer Reviews

Will all the fluent female poets please stand?
Will all the fluent female poets please stand? Over 60 poets meet this challenge in this beautifully orchestrated collection of work. The poems address every facet of life - hair, black history, body & soul, family, growing up in the hood, the motherland and much more. Mocha Sistah discusses the misconceptions that youth have with education and the reality of the rap game in "Miseducation of a New Generation". Stacey Tolbert eloquently describes her realization of motherhood in "Dishes".

The musical prose and magnificent written string of words is OUTSTANDING. The quality and diversity of these pieces deserves a standing ovation ten times over. If you are a fan of hip hop or written prose this is a MUST HAVE book.

Deltareviewer
Reviewing for Real Page Turners

A potpourri of prose
Reviewed by Beverly Pechin for Reader Views (10/06)

To find such a wonderful collection of poetry and prose under one cover is truly a gift. To find it so easily is a tribute to the hard work and dreams of one woman, DuEwa M. Frazier.

Ms. Frazier has found quite a diverse group of women to share their inner most thoughts, dreams, desires and aspirations of their world and somehow grouped them all together in one beautiful piece of literature that says it all.

Broken up into sections that denote the basic ideas of the prose that follows, each writer orchestrates her pages with words to bring the reader into the author's own world and open it wide for a viewing like many have never seen before. From subjects as sad as abuse to as beautiful as love, each author has their own way of sharing what they've experienced in life through writing. Various formats are used, from Haikus to Rhyme. Song writing is brought onto the pages without the use of music, yet easily puts a beat in your mind as you read through a rap style piece of poetry. Simple three and four line poems can easily share the pages with poetry created in many stanzas and come together as one great work of art by many artists.

There are so many aspects of life covered under this one book that you simply become amazed at the differences in our world while touched by the common ground many of those different worlds may have. While some may speak of the ghetto and hard life for a woman who's expected to fail, others translate their stories of 'making it' into the pages while sharing similar aches and pains of life. Is the glamour of a rapper truly so glamorous? Are girls from the `hood' really too tough to cry? Is there really any particular type of woman who should feel at ease with being herself or should we all be proud?

As you read through the pages and experience some of the authors' own life, you will quickly realize that there is a lot of talent out there just waiting to be found. Lucky for us, Ms. Frazier has not only found it but shared it with us too!

Good Read
I wasn't too taken away by the work in this book, but it had its strong pieces. Im satisfied.