Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery

An incendiary literary work more relevant now than ever.

＂if anger were an ax/it would split me open/and if this is a sermon/let it be my granddaddy’s sermon/my grandmother’s foottapping/steady rocking/choir singing＂ --from ＂This Is Not a New Age＂

First published in 1998, Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery is the debut collection by acclaimed poet and performer Pamela Sneed. Provocative and potent, it tackles the political and personal issues of enslavement, sexuality, emotional trauma, and abuse. These poems chart the journey of an artist trying to escape cycles of dependency and reclaim lost self and identity. Drawing parallels to Harriet Tubman’s journey on the Underground Railroad, Sneed’s explora-tions of the woods are a metaphor and emotional path one must explore to attain self-ownership. Sneed’s poems are bound by the search for love, freedom, and justice--from images of lesbian love to Emmet Till’s bloated body, they offer a raging cry and a roadmap for those interested in transforming the personal into social justice and abolitionist practices.

Pamela Sneed is a NYC-based poet, performer, and visual artist. Here other books include KONG and Other Works, Sweet Dreams, and Funeral Diva which won the 2021 Lambda Lesbian Poetry Award. Additionally in 2021, She was a finalist for New York Theater Workshop’s Golden Harris Award and received a monetary award. In 2021, she was a panelist for The David Zwirner Gallery’s More Life exhibit, and has spoken at Bard Center for Humanities, The Ford Foundation, The Gordon Parks Foundation, Columbia University, The New School, New York Public Library, The Brooklyn Museum, MoMA, DIA, NYU’s Center for Humanities. She has published in The Paris Review, Frieze, Art Forum and elsewhere. Her visual work has been featured in the group show Omniscient at Leslie Lohman Gallery and at the Ford Foundation. She is an online professor in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s low-res program and teaches poetry and art across disciplines in Columbia University’s MFA in Visual Arts program.