This poem is included in the digital library as part of a partnership between the OHSU Library and the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative to share Narrative Medicine curriculum and the items used in those teaching sessions. For additional information about how the poem is used in teaching and a community driven context, please visit Accessible Narrative Medicine website.

Born in 1936 in DePew, New York, Lucille Clifton spent her childhood in Buffalo. Before attending SUNY Fredonia, she studied at Howard University. Langston Hughes discovered Clifton as a poet, and in 1970, he included her poetry in his hugely important collection, The Poetry of the Negro. In addition to becoming the first writer to have two poetry collections selected as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987) and Next: New Poems (1987), Clifton won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize in 2007. Clifton's work highlights perseverance and resilience in the face of hardship, with an emphasis on the African-American experience and family life in particular. (Source: )poetryfoundation.org

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