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i am new york city
here is my brain of hot sauce
my tobacco teeth my
mattress of bedbug tongue
In the mid-'70s she married Edwards, a sculptor who made drawings for many of her books, and started teaching black literature and music at Rutgers University. She co-founded the Organization of Women Writers of Africa in 1991, and split her time between New York and Dakar, Senegal.
In addition to Edwards and her son, she is survived by three stepdaughters, Ana, Margit and Allma Edwards; a sister, Shawn Smith; and two grandchildren.
When Cortez, draped in a red-and-black shawl, performed one of her better-known poems, "Find Your Own Voice," in 2010 with her son, the words became something of a mantra:
Find your own voice & use it, use your own voice & find it
The sounds of drizzle on dry leaves are not like sounds of insults between pedestrians
Those women laughing in the window do not sound like air conditioners on the brink
The river turtle does not breathe like a slithering boa constrictor
The roar of a bull is not like the cackle of a hyena
The growl of a sea-leopard is not like the teething cry of a baby
The slash of a barracuda is not like the gulp of a leaping whale
The speech of a tiger shark is not like the bark of an eagle-fish
The scent of a gardenia is not like the scent of a tangerine
Find your own voice & use it, use your own voice & find it
