In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Artist-in-Residence
  • Allison Joseph (bio)

Good ghetto girls and boys get art if they’re lucky: field trips downtown for kids whose parents cared little about the finer things— sculptures, paintings, ballets, Shakespearean plays to enrich our inner-city minds, to fascinate and calm us in ways the streets could not. So not one of us was surprised when a lanky white woman named Sylvia showed up at school to teach us dance, her long brown hair parted straight down the middle, then braided so it hung heavily down her back, leaping if she leapt, turned. She dressed in weird, loose clothes tie-dyed in colors I later learned the names of— lavender, chartreuse, azure, wore dainty Chinese slippers that slid and slipped easily over industrial-strength school tile. She charmed us, this white woman, with her wide and slightly bucktoothed smile, her long arms that flailed above her head as she implored us to reach, grow steady as trees, our shoes off, piled in a corner, chairs and tables pushed aside for this once-a-week dance session that wasn’t really dance, but more like awkward mime, our bodies mimicking hers as she spun, crouched, [End Page 451] transforming herself to hissing witch, generous fairy. She made us re-enact the myth of Pandora’s box, so one lucky girl got to be Pandora, while the rest of us were down on all fours, ready to spring from our invisible box, ready to dance all the evil in the world. When that chosen girl leaned over, peered in, and opened up that box, we all flew out hooting, screaming, rushing at her while Sylvia clapped to the pre-recorded drumming coming from her portable tape recorder. She smiled to see us whirl as if she’d really done something, taught us something about how evil moves, temptation works. We never told her how embarrassing we all thought it was, never let her know how strange we thought her dances were, how lily-white and out-of-style. We let her think she hadn’t wasted her time with us, clinging to her when her half-hour was up, chanting her name aloud when class was over, thirty-five underprivileged voices singing Sylvia, Sylvia, Sylvia!

Selected works by Allison Joseph:

  • Summers on Screvin

  • On Sidewalks, on Streetcorners, As Girls

  • Playing Rough

  • Artist-in-Residence

  • It’s Tough to be a Girl Scout in the City

  • The Tenant

  • Señora Williams

  • Plenty

  • An Interview with Allison Joseph

Related Articles:

Summers on Screvin

Related Articles:

On Sidewalks, on Streetcorners, As Girls

Related Articles:

Playing Rough

Related Articles:

It’s Tough to be a Girl Scout in the City

Related Articles:

The Tenant

Related Articles:

Señora Williams

Related Articles:

Plenty

Related Articles:

An Interview with Allison Joseph

Allison Joseph

Allison Joseph, who was born in London, is an assistant professor of creative writing and literature at Southern Illinois University (Carbondale). Her poems have appeared in numerous periodicals, including The Kenyon Review, Parnassus, and Callaloo. She is author of What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand Press, 1992), a volume of poems. She graduated from Kenyon College and received the M.F.A. from Indiana University (Bloomington).

...

Share