Works by
Sapphire
(Writer)
(aka Ramona Lofton)

Novels

• Push (1996)
  Relentless, remorseless, and inspirational, this "horrific, hope-filled story" (Newsday) is certain to haunt a generation of readers. Precious Jones, 16 years old and pregnant by her father with her second child, meets a determined and highly radical teacher who takes her on a journey of transformation and redemption.

Poetry

• Meditations on the Rainbow: Poetry (1987)

• American Dreams (1994)
  In the tradition of Alice Walker, this electrifying new African American voice delivers the verdict on the urban condition in a sensual, propulsive, and prophetic book of poetry and prose.
  
  Whether she is writing about an enraged teenager gone "wilding" in Central Park, fifteen-year-old Latasha Harlins gunned down by a Korean grocer, or a brutalized child who grows up to escape her probable fate through the miracle of art, Sapphire's vision in this collection of poetry and prose is unswervingly honest.

• Black Wings & Blind Angels: Poems  (1999)
  A book of electrifying poems by the acclaimed author of Push ("Brutal . . . redemptive"--Newsweek) and American Dreams ("Her insights are precise, terrifying, and ultimately hopeful. She sings in many voices, and every one of them cries out for justice" --Dorothy Allison).
  Alive with the emotional honesty and intellectual force for which Sapphire has been admired as both a writer and a performance artist, these forty-seven poems take us into America's past and present, bearing testimony to the black experience in a country fragmented by war, racism, and urban and domestic violence. They tell the story of a search for the complicated spiritual path back to one's roots, a story of family, race, and self-transformation.
  
  A provocative book that astonishes by the power of its language.

See also:

• Women on Women An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction (1990) by Joan Nestle and Naomi Holoch, eds.

• Critical Condition: Women on the Edge of Violence (1993) by Amy Scholder

• Keep Simple Ceremonies: The Feminist Spiritual Community of Portland, Maine (1993) by Diane Eiker, Sapphire, and Sylvia Sims, Illustrator

• High Risk 2: Writings on Sex, Death, and Subversion (1994) by Amy Scholder

• Sapphire Present: "Pimp -- The Story of My Life"  (1998) by Iceberg Slim and Sapphire