Alice Walker is beloved for her ability to speak her own truth in ways that speak for and about countless others. Here she confronts personal and collective challenges in words that dance, sing, and heal. As Shiloh McCloud describes in her foreword, Walkerβs poems contain βthe death of loved ones and the birth of new ideas, the sorrow of rejection and the deliciousness of love, the sweetness of home, familial abandonment, and what it means to belong to the greater world family.β As Walker writes in her preface, the βemptyβ half of a glass holds βa rainbow that could exist only in the vacant space.β Musing on the role of dance, which gives this collection its title, she writes, βthough we have encountered our share of grief and troubles on this earth, we can still hold the line of beauty, form, and beat. No small accomplishment in a world as challenging as this one.β
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