Toi W Derricotte

Toi Derricotte

Toi Derricotte (pronounced DARE-ah-cot ) (b. April 12, 1941 in Hamtramck, Michigan) is an American poet and a professor of writing at University of ...

Captivity (Pitt Poetry Series)

What are the forces that cause us to strike out and harm each other? Captivity explores the way in which the individual is held hostage by society; how the forces of racism, sexism, and classism frequently express themselves as violence within the family. The book also explores a deeper captivity, l...

Captivity (Pitt Poetry Series)

What are the forces that cause us to strike out and harm each other? Captivity explores the way in which the individual is held hostage by society; how the forces of racism, sexism, and classism frequently express themselves as violence within the family. The book also explores a deeper captivity, l...

The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey

"The Black Notebooks is the most profound document I have read on racism in America today. . . . [It] is not just one of the best books on race I have ever read but just simply one of the best books I have ever read."―SapphireThe Black Notebooks is one of the most extraordinary and courageous accoun...

Tender (Pitt Poetry Series)

Toi Derricotte’s fourth collection of poetry. Tender probes sexuality, spirituality, emotion, child abuse, mother hatred, and the physical and psychological ravages of violence. These poems are raw and upsetting in subject matter, yet extremely readable.

The Undertaker's Daughter (Pitt Poetry Series)

“Poems that stick with you like a song that won’t stop repeating itself in your brain, poems whose cadences burrow into your bloodstream, orchestrating your breathing long before their sense attaches its hooks to your heart.”—Washington Post on Captivity

Empress of the Death House

Black Poetic Feminism: The Imagination of Toi Derricotte

Sexual abuse happens. Domestic violence happens. We know it happens. We have child protective services. We watch Law and Order: SVU. We are surrounded by sex in our media, and we are surrounded by sexual violence in our media. And yet I have turned to the work of Toi Derricotte because we are not su...

The Civil Rights Reader: American Literature from Jim Crow to Reconciliation

This anthology of drama, essays, fiction, and poetry presents a thoughtful, classroom-tested selection of the best literature for learning about the long civil rights movement. Unique in its focus on creative writing, the volume also ranges beyond a familiar 1954-68 chronology to include works from ...