A Woman's Voice: A Little Book of Poems is a look inside my mind. First, as a young Black woman growing up in the Deep South during the time of White Only and For Coloreds signs. And the only work for a grown Black woman was as an Aunt Jemima, i.e., housemaid. My poem, The Breeze Through the Lilac Trees is an ode to my childhood memories of when my mother carted me along with her when she went 'visiting' her sisters or 'paying respect' when an old family friend had died. I soon noticed that everywhere we went, there were lilac trees. Pink lilac trees. Purple lilac trees. And even white lilac trees. Was it their way of signaling that their home was a place of safety in a cruel Whites Only world?My poem, My Mother's Garden, is about how my mother sustained our family of eight with her tiny vegetable garden. And even though we were desperately poor, and needed every pole bean, potato, and tomato she grew, she still made room for flowers. After making the transition from rural country life where I hardly ever saw a man other than my father, to the enthralling, vibrant, and sometimes violent streets of Chicago, there were new rules to learn as a young Black woman. Those things, I write about in the poems, Yellow Dresses, Evolve, and It's How I Knew He Didn't Love Me. Finally, I give voice to the screams of the Mothers of Murdered Sons in the poems, Sabrina (Trayvon Martin's mother) and I, Who Was Murdered.A Woman's Voice: A Little Book Of Poems is a little book, but it's a powerful book.
About the Author: ELIZA ANKUM grew up in the small, and very rural, town of Latham, Alabama back in a time when there were no McDonalds, paved streets, or street lights, and telephones were a luxury. Eliza's favorite pastime was reading the Encyclopedia Britannica. When she was 13 years old her parents made a decision that would forever change her life. They moved the family to Chicago, Illinois. Chicago was a world apart from Latham, Alabama. Everything was different - the way the people dressed, the way they talked, and even the way they moved through their world was different from downhome. As might be expected, her rural upbringing made her a target for Chicago's tough inner city kids. How did she cope? She took to the Library and found new worlds and friends in books. Never before had she found such solace. Latham had been too poor and too isolated to afford such an indulgent thing as a Library. After High School, she transferred her love of reading into a job set taking on mostly administrative and secretarial jobs. These jobs gave her another set of skills valuable to all authors, grammar and sentence building. It was not until years later, while watching The Oprah Show that she was inspired to try her hand at writing, first with her riveting autobiography, 'STALKED! By Voices'. Eliza followed with the fictional aviation disaster novel, 'Flight 404'. She then wrote the highly successful Ruby Sanders and Jared Anderson novels (Ruby and Jared Saga).