Equality For A Lightning Bug: A Small Collection of Poems by

by Katherine Dunham

"

This little book speaks of healing and love.  These are very common subjects but when
framed as poetry and raised to the surface from the deepest levels, these
concepts take on new colors and strange, perhaps disturbing shapes.  Poetry is a way of expressing emotions and
subconscious thoughts which are difficult if not impossible to express in any
other way.  It is a very personal form of
music and if done well, should sing and touch places long buried within.  There should be something mysterious and yet
very familiar about good poetry. 
Feelings and emotions in this genre are both individual and absolutely
universal.  Words which resonate in one
heart should resonate in all hearts. 

"

63 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 30, 2004

About the author

was an American dancer, choreographer, songwriter, author, educator and activist who was trained as an anthropologist. Dunham had one of the most successful dance careers in American and European theater of the 20th century and has been called the "Matriarch and Queen Mother of Black Dance".[1]

During her heyday in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, she was renowned throughout Europe and Latin America as La Grande Katherine, and the Washington Post called her "Dance's Katherine the Great". For more than 30 years she maintained the Katherine Dunham Dance Company, the only permanent, self-subsidized American black dance troupe at that time, and over her long career she choreographed more than 90 individual dances. Dunham was an innovator in African-American modern dance as well as a leader in the field of Dance Anthropology, or Ethno choreology.

In 1992, at the age of 82, Katherine Dunham went on a highly publicized 47-day hunger strike to protest what she condemned as the discriminatory U.S. foreign policy against Haitian boat-people.