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Off-Season City Pipe
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
"This fine collection of poetry by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke makes a ladder of songs. The ladder balances between the well-grooved symbol of a warrior on horseback running into the wind for battle, to a Native mother feeding her children when there is nothing. She, too, is a warrior. The poem 'The Change' stands out as a classic of contemporary Native literature. What is presented in this evocative poetry is not a 'struggle for dignity,' but a dignity for struggle."—Joy Harjo
Drawing on her background as a tobacco sharecropper, factory worker, and fisherwoman, Hedge Coke fills the void of Native American working-class literature with poems as vivid in their telling as they are powerful in their ethos. Off-Season City Pipe lyrically articulates the stark contrast between an ancestry whose strong work ethic, manual skills, and environmental stewardship defined their communities, but whose present circumstances have forced so many into poverty, performing work that fails to provide sustenance for the land or its people.
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