Freedom's Unfinished Work
after Frances E. W. Harper
in the shadow of a nation’s promise unfulfilled obligations linger the ghosts of broken treaties and forced assimilation’s bitter legacy
the stories of native women forcibly taken from their families and placed in boarding schools where their culture and language were systematically erased
their histories a testament to the brutal efficiency of oppression and the unyielding resilience of those who refuse to be silenced
in the present we are forced to confront the consequences of a past that refuses to stay buried
I took the themes of social justice and the struggles of the oppressed from Frances E. W. Harper, and applied them to the experiences of native women who were forcibly assimilated into white culture. I tried to capture the sense of urgent, uncontained speech that is characteristic of Harper's poetry.