Captivity

by Toi Derricotte

What are the forces that cause us to strike out and harm each other?  Captivity explores the way in which the individual is held hostage by society; how the forces of racism, sexism, and classism frequently express themselves as violence within the family.  The book also explores a deeper captivity, like the Jews in Egypt yearning for the Promised Land, the soul trapped in exile from God.

Genres: Poetry

88 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 1989

About the author

Toi Derricotte is the author of The Undertaker’s Daughter (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011) and four earlier collections of poetry, including Tender, winner of the 1998 Paterson Poetry Prize. Her literary memoir, The Black Notebooks (W.W. Norton), received the 1998 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her honors include, among many others, the 2012 Paterson Poetry Prize for Sustained Literary Achievement, the 2012 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry, the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, two Pushcart Prizes and the Distinguished Pioneering of the Arts Award from the United Black Artists.

Derricotte is the co-founder of Cave Canem Foundation (with Cornelius Eady), Professor Emerita at the University of Pittsburgh and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Reviews

[Jed Kudrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was assigned this book for my Introduction To Creative Writing class. I've found a love for poetry in this class, but reading poetry does not seem to always build on that love, but rather make me want to write my own rather than read more. It's not that there's anything wrong with this book or her poetry - there's not - it is actually good - it's just not my type of poetry. I prefer poets like Edgar Allan Poe or Emily Dickinson, but after analyzing Toi Derricotte's poems in class they take on a newfound meaning I didn't see the first time I read through them. So, regardless of my initial reactions to reading these poems, there is a deeper meaning than lies on the surface and they are very well written and meaningful and should be commended.

[Seth Wells · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding precision. Spine-crushing candor. She’s so honest about her own impulses that you are forced to question your own. There is no writer like Toi Derricotte.

“So I hobble down a hall
of disappointments past where
your darkness and my darkness have
had intercourse with each other.
Why have I wasted my life
in anger, thinking I could have more
than what is glimpsed in recognition” (32)

Will be reading her, and this collection, until my eyes give out on me

[Roxie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This should be read way more.

[hh · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5