The Fat Black Woman's Poems

Celebrating five decades of the feminist publisher, each of the Five Gold Reads represents an iconic moment in Virago's history, from the 1970s to today.

Beauty
is a fat black woman
walking the fields
pressing a breezed
hibiscus
to her cheek
while the sun lights up
her feet

Nichols gives us images that stare us straight in the eye, images of joy, challenge, accusation. Her 'fat black woman' is brash; rejoices in herself; poses awkward questions to politicians, rulers, suitors, to a white world that still turns its back. Grace Nichols writes in a language that is wonderfully vivid yet economical of the pleasures and sadnesses of memory, of loving, of 'the power to be what I am, a woman, charting my own futures'.

Dimensions (cm): 0.9 x 12.6  x 19.6