Love Is a Dangerous Word: The Selected Poems of Essex Hemphill Human Rights As Ellen is consumed by

As Ellen is consumed by visions and voices

I am the Master

6 years old

and the world

she begins to question everything: her career choice

Love Is a Dangerous Word: The Selected Poems of Essex Hemphill Human Rights As Ellen is consumed byFor three decades, the legacy of writer, editor, performer, and activist Essex Hemphill has been lovingly sustained through xeroxed copies of his few published works. They are as potent now as they were in the 1980s. With tenderness and rage, Hemphill's poems unflinchingly explore the complex, overlapping identities of sexuality, gender, and race, the American political landscape, and his own experiences as a black gay man during the HIV AIDS crisis.