2Leaf Press is pleased to announce that Shirley Bradley LeFlore’s debut collection, Brasbones & Rainbows, is available for sale on Createspace, Amazon.com and other online outlets in the next few weeks.
Born and raised in St. Louis, LeFlore is part of a literary tradition of African American women writers whose roots are firmly planted in the principles of feminism as well as a politicized ethic identity. Her work has been published in literary journals and anthologies, and she has performed throughout the United States. She has recorded CDs, and has appeared in numerous radio and television programs.
An underlying characteristic of much of LeFlore’s work consists of socially conscious verse influenced by feminist activism. Like many nascent feminists of the times such as Maya Angelou, Joy Harjo, Adriennne Rich and Audre Lorde. LeFlore always understood that in order to thrive – not just survive – women must learn how to adapt to society’s ever-changing rhythms without sacrificing their own identities in the process. And with the effortless musicality of her language, LeFlore never assumed a static definition of the African American woman, but rather, always challenges readers to think about what it means to be “American,” “black” and “woman at different historical moments in our lives. 
LeFlore writes with an imagination of the senses by using wonderful metaphorical language. Her verses flow in an easy going, smith and soothing Southern American dialect mixed with African American vernacular English – its intensity changing from poem to poem – with words serving as musical notes.
Throughout this collection, LeFlore blends realism with lyricism, interspersed with humor and then takes it one step further by accurately depicting the lives of the common, everyday people (most of them women) with vivid imagery. These relatively short and accessible poems with illusions to black culture and music often move fast and furious and are surprisingly synaptic. The poems connect to each other because they are all drawn from a lifetime of living that affirms the strength and fragility of the long-term ties of kinship, as well as the joys and pleasures set against the real possibility of disappointment and loss. More importantly,
LeFlore’s poems are generally suffused by a keen sense of the ideal and by a profound loss of humanity, especially toward African Americans. LeFlore’s work succeeds because she is a storyteller, or rather, a story singer. She uses language to continue our oldest tradition of gifting the tale, sharing the fabric of verse through sound, creating poetic lines into phrases of jazz and blues, from the lyrical to the polemical.
For Shirley Bradley LeFlore,, the “personal,” the “political,” ad the “poetical” are indissolubly linked, and her body of work can be read as a series of urgent dispatches. . Be sure to pick up a copy of Brassbones & Rainbows. Includes a foreword by Amina Baraka, an introduction by Gabrielle David, with spectacular artwork on the cover by renowned artist, Frank Frazier.
