The Tongue I Dream In
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The tongue Sheree Renée Thomas dreams in is soft and sharp, ethereal and down-home.
This book of poems, stories, and essays draws together examples illustrating a mind immersed in Black legends and white myths, and in the growing realization of our place in the world and time, and in irresistible pull of the future: starships, floods, dancers twinned by crystal-filled caverns, and iridescent crops of living retribution. In her interview, Thomas explores the intricate intersections of poetry and activism and underscores the way she inhabits them. Taste with this book’s tongue the salty sweetness of her world.
Praise
“A gift for longtime Thomas fans and an ideal introduction for new comers.”
—Publishers Weekly Starred Review
“Sheree is one of our poet-songstresses. Her words dance on the page, simultaneously healing balm and forthright challenge. You read a sentence of hers and it fills your belly, electrifies your brain. In the face of the beauty of her language and the way it signifies, you will come away changed.”
—Nalo Hopkinson, author of Black Heart Man and Jamaica Ginger and Other Concoctions
“A delightful journey connecting the African diaspora’s rich and wearied past to our hopeful futures, The Tongue I Dream In is Sheree Renée Thomas’s love letter to the genre and anyone who ever looked to the stars in wonder. The poetry dazzles, the prose lingers, and the essays are a window into the brilliance of one of today’s most influential voices in speculative fiction. This was wonderful, and I am better for having read it.”
—Justin C. Key, author of The Hospital at the End of the World
“Folks are out there trying to steal who you are. In The Tongue I Dream In, Afrofuturist visionary Sheree Renée Thomas gives you back to yourself. Nobody taps the wisdom and humor of the ancestors and dreams the future like Sheree. Her stories, poems, and essays make your spirit dance. Her speculations and conjurations stir the heart and blow your mind. Get on board! Sheree takes you there! The Tongue I Dream In is exactly what we need today.”
—Andrea Hairston, author of The Redemption Center Is Closed on Sundays and Will Do Magic for Spare Change
“Thomas’ new collection sings with the stardust we all carry in our body, transporting us into the infinite space of ancestral dreaming through her stories and poems. Her essays reveal with crisp clarity the reality of our world’s challenges and the hope flourishing in the human spirit. This book entertains and enlightens the reader and expands the world in which we’re each connected.”
—Linda D. Addison, award-winning author, HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and SFPA Grand Master
“If you like Octavia Butler’s Parable duology, Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar, or the poetry of Sonia Sanchez, you’ll love this collection.”
—Mara Mathews of Quail Ridge Books
“When great soul meets great work, what you get is a thing of wonder.”
—Arthur Flowers, NEA fellow and author of The Hoodoo Book of Flowers: The Great Black Book of Generations
“Thomas’s skill with poetry and prose is remarkable.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A master of the craft and a true literary alchemist, Thomas blends the joys and sorrows of action, diaspora, spirituality, culture, and love into absolute gold.”
—Daniel José Older, New York Times bestselling author
“A whirlpool of poem and story. . . . Thomas’s skill with poetry and prose is remarkable, and even the shortest poems in this volume contain ideas and images that will linger in the reader’s mind.”
—Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize winner, author of Olio and Leadbelly
“Sheree Renée Thomas is an award-winning writer . . . a storyteller . . . who has expanded the territory, as well as the audience for science fiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy.”
—George Larrimore, PBS
“Thomas is a griot for the 21st century.”
—WRAL
About the Author
Sheree Renée Thomas is a multiple award-winning author, poet, and editor. She curated World Fantasy Award–winning anthologies Dark Matter 1 and 2 and was the first to introduce W.E.B. Du Bois’s science fiction to speculative fiction readers. She’s associate editor of Obsidian: Literature & the Arts in the African Diaspora and senior editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee.
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