Crossing The Threshold

"Crossing the Threshold: Voice of a Black Woman" draws the dark line between White and Black culture in America. Growing up in a household with a mother who came up during the Jim Crow era, Arida struggles through the twistedness of the messages she heard then and strives to come out on the other side by forming her own perceptions without hate. This is one woman's journey to healing from racial prejudice affecting her life as she grew up Black but now lives in a White world.

Through the collection of poems in this book, Wright struggles to find her own voice about how the issue of racism and prejudice has affected her. Wright, who is Black but lives in a White world. In all the circles I travel in living on the island of Key West, except church, I am the only person of color attending the Key West Writers Guild and the Key West Poetry Guild. To improve my craft of writing, I had to start going to gatherings and at first, I was very resistant. Then I was very afraid and uncomfortable that they would not accept me as I would read my radical poems to them and was very surprised when the poems were praised, and the group encouraged me to "put them out there" in the world. The trauma Wright endured being in love with her White boyfriend in 1975 at an all-White high school was never dealt with until writing the radical poems. With each poem, Wright is expressing the pain and then transmutes it into love. Wright hopes that White people hearing or reading the poems will also look at their issues of racial prejudice and cross the threshold themselves towards tolerance and mutual understanding.

Arida Wright is a poet and the author of "Then Sings My Soul." She has a collection of poems in several anthologies. President of Powerlines Healing by the Sea ministries, Wright lives her philosophy of self-empowerment, which for her is a lifelong mission of spirituality. She is a Minister of Metaphysics and a Tradition Reiki Master. Currently she is a member of the Key West Poetry Guild and the Key West Writer's Guild. She lives in Key West, Florida. This is one woman's journey to healing from racial prejudice affecting her life as she grew up Black but now lives in a White world.