Poetry. African American Studies. Few poets have managed to enter the horror of Jim Crow America with the fresh insight and sharply honed detail that we see in Dawes's writing. With all good Southern songs of spiritual and emotional truth, Dawes understands that redemption is essential and he finds it in the pure music of his art. Dawes is not an interloper here, but a man who reminds us of the power of the most human and civilizing gift of empathy and the shared memory of the Middle Passage and its aftermath across the black diaspora. Dawes finds meaning in Sumter, South Carolina, as the voices of women who lived through most of the twentieth century unfold with the raw honesty of people who have waited for a long time to finally speak their mind.