Funeral Diva

by Pamela Sneed

A poetic memoir about coming-of-age in the AIDS era, and its effects on life and art.

"She is a writer for the future, in that she defies genre."—Hilton Als

"Riveting, personal, open-hearted, risky and wise. This is Pamela Sneed at the top of her gifts, firmly grounding her history into our history, enriching both, acknowledging all the legacies and losses, influences gold and ash."—Sarah Schulman, author of My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan and Bush Years

In this collection of personal essays and poetry, acclaimed poet and performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva captures the impact of AIDS on black queer life, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living, the dying, and the dead. Sneed's poems not only converse with lovers past and present, but also with her literary forebears—like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Audre Lorde—whose aesthetic and thematic investments she renews for a contemporary American landscape. Offering critical focus on matters from police brutality to LGBTQ+ rights, Funeral Diva confronts the most pressing issues of our time with acerbic wit and audacity.

Genres: Poetry, Memoir, Queer, Nonfiction, Essays, LGBT, African American

144 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 20, 2020

Reviews

[Lauren]

▫️FUNERAL DIVA by Pamela Sneed (2020, City Lights) is a memoir in verse and essay. I was not familiar with Sneed's earlier work, but the snippets I read of this one online made me add it to my checkout list at the library.

Loved her 2 essays "History" and "Ila" about her childhood, adoption, friendships, travels, and her coming out as lesbian as a young adult.

The prose essays launch into prose poetry and verse - with the titular "Funeral Diva" as the absolute highlight for me. She traces the dozens of friends she lost to AIDS in the 1980s/90s, and her role of offering eulogies and poetry at their respective funerals, noting the beautiful lives lost in this devastating pandemic.

Later poems offer some cultural commentary on books, films, and call back to her earlier biographical essays.

[Amy Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is truly unlike any I've read before. Sneed's experience is a unique one, and coupled with the way she tells her story, this poetry collection is more like a performative art piece than a book. Everything she's written in this collection is full of passion and emotion. I suppose mostly because of the subject matter, it made me think of the Greek Chorus in David Levithan's Two Boys Kissing. Recommended for fans of LGBTQIA+ poetry and people who remember the AIDS crisis.

[Lynn Meeuwissen · Rating 4 out of 5]

- Very different from what I am used to reading. Sometimes had difficulty with the style: probably partly because I’m not a native English speaker but also partly I also feel like it would come more to justice hearing it perform out loud.
- I really like the passion that shines through the entire book. Her life story was intriguing: impressed with what she overcame and the impact she made in others lives. Although some parts I felt were too negative but who am I to judge, even if it is “just” a feeling, the fact that it is there makes it valid and problematic, and I can never comprehend what it is to live through the challenges she had to.
- Quite a heavy and dark yet thought provoking book to start the year with.
- Favorite pieces: Never Again & Born Frees.
- Taking the mantra “I am going to write a new story” with me.

[liv · Rating 5 out of 5]

5/5 i am gooped, gabbed, floored, so incredibly good and important and yes !! pamela is such a wonderful writer and just person it’s so obvious from how she writes about gay culture and race, what a woman. thank god for poeple like her.

[Ian Longan]

The kinda book that makes you stare at the wall in silence for a handful of minutes.

Very important read especially for Pride

[August · Rating 5 out of 5]

Politically driven and heart breaking.

Pamela Sneed opened my mind and made me question my own in-built prejudices. Her comparisons between AIDS and Covid-19 allowed me to connect with my queer community and ancestors in ways that were both devastating and life-altering.

A must read.

[t · Rating 4 out of 5]

SO powerful. loved the memoir poem blend - ultimately, unexpectedly, i liked the prose sections most as elements of the poetry became a little repetitive. such a strong authorial voice, so vitally interactive (and some great song recs)

[isabella · Rating 3 out of 5]

she’s a very fascinating person and i was very interested in her life and work. i wasn’t especially taken by her poetic style- perhaps it’s the sort you need to hear her speak aloud? more of a 3.5 and i might put it to 4 after letting marinate

[Julie]

https://www.lambdaliterary.org/2021/0...

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved this autobiographical short story and poetry collection about a black lesbian's experiences living through the height of the AIDS epidemic and the connections she makes between those experiences and the experiences of marginalized groups throughout the history of the United States. We need more voices like these to put our history in context and tell the stories that haven't been heard. Beautiful writing, beautiful voice, thought-provoking.

[Nick Melloan-ruiz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vital

[Michael Dipietro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sneed writes in a plaintive prose-poetry style that is very suited to live reading. Usually I don't have very much patience for this strain in poetry, but I had the luck to meet her and hear her perform, and she's extremely magnetic as a person and performer so it helped to be able to hear her voice while reading. The straightforwardness and plain observation is refreshing. Still, this didn't move me as much as I hoped. Enjoyed her introduction the most.

[Lou Corn · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first piece, history (written with a strike through) was an incredible recollection of coming out in the older sense of the word. Her rendering of so many people she’s grown with, guides, companions, and complicated loves, was this beautiful lattice through which to understand a life, its phases. My appreciation was uneven throughout the rest of the collected poems and essays but I howled and loved the end of the piece on Beyoncé saying “we have to have analysis”.

[Carrie Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

“And what about the people who weren't on the streets but in jobs fighting the system
The dykes and queers meeting each other
forming community
and connections and families and love
Just like in South Africa where they prevented intermingling but ways were found
And each time we touched or loved found each other in darkness and light
It was resistance
Each time we told each other you're beautiful
You're not wrong
It was resistance”

[g · Rating 2 out of 5]

at no fault of the author, this book was not what i expected it to be (my library app listed it as poetry and while pamela sneed is a poet, this was more or less essays). so i got off on the wrong foot with this one and never quite recovered. at the core of everything was a deeply important story about the aids epidemic and the failure on many levels to save people thus creating the fall out that sneed lived and her involvement in that grief. i'm thankful that she shared so much of herself with us.

however, mixed in between this critical dialogue was a discussion on racism, politics, pop culture that never felt fleshed out. she analyzes king kong's racist roots, the hunger games and parable of the sower as today, the impact on african tourism at the hands of the mini-series roots and marvel's the black panther, cbs hit tv series survivor for its lack of surviving, beyoncé as an exploitive business model, princess diana as a beloved face of a colonial empire, planet of the apes as a refusal to "go back where you came from." it felt like an endless take down of pop culture for the sake of naming as many thing as possible. especially so when her essay history is built off summarizing the plots of other books and films and doing little to create a purposeful connective thread.

[Liv · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funeral Diva is a book I picked up without reading any reviews as I stumbled across it in @thebookishtypeleeds when I was drawn in by the blurb.

A collection of mostly poetry with some personal essays, Sneed reflects on the impacts of the AIDS crisis on Black queer life in 1980s New York. She touches on police brutality, loss of friends, bonds of friendship, the lack of openness about AIDS and the way individuals suffering were treated. She also talks about being adopted, her relationship with her parents and particularly her father and abuse she faced. Sneed also dips in her relationships with both men and women and her life as a queer Black woman.

Towards the end of the book she draws parallels between c*vid and AIDS and how these have disproportionately impacted Black communities in America.

There is also a love of literature as she talks about the impact of Black female writers like Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, June Jordan and more on her and her writing.

The book is personal and feels like a memoir through poetry and essays as Sneed unpacks some of the trauma and grief in her life. I'm really glad I picked this one up as it gave me so much to think about and I might never have stumbled across it otherwise.

[Poppy Sockett · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm in awe of the way in which Sneed confronts issue towering over the black and queer communities of both the AIDS crisis' dominant period as well as unsettingly currently. Her story is told with strength, urging the reader to compensate her acceptance with emotion and discomfort. We should feel uncomfortable with the stories she tells, the friends she lost and the state of governments across the world in how they hushed the severity of AIDS in favour of lasting another day without saying the dreaded words. Sneed's poem 'Mysti' about her childhood cat struck a chord in my reading. She pivots from the familial and comfortably domestic to a world her pet was unaware of; what is escaped and how she did not. Funeral Diva is the name associated with Sneed's consistent presence at the memorials of so many men taken before their time at the hands of ignorance combined with a deadly force. She illustrates the vibrance in their community in her opening memoir and throughout the collection, leaving us with a difficulty to swallow what we have been fed in a way that feels powerful and entirely necessary. 4 stars.

[b (tobias forge's version) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm unintentionally reading quite a few books about--or that at least touch on--the AIDS crisis this year. Detransition, Baby; Anesthesia; Gentrification of the Mind... And now Funeral Diva, which moved higher on my list of reading priorities when it won the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry. Sneed opens her collection with a couple of prose pieces that contextualize the poems to come and set up the themes with which they're concerned: the impact of AIDS on Black gay men and lesbians, the legacy of slavery and the relationship of African Americans to Africa, police and state violence against Black people, and the author's life (both her childhood as an adoptee and her coming-of-age as a lesbian). It reads as an assertion of the power of language both as testimony and a way of creating liberatory futures. I won't say that Sneed is an Audre Lorde for today, because Lorde is timeless, and we will always need her work. But reading Funeral Diva evoked some of the same feelings as reading Sister Outsider for the first time.

[Sally Elhennawy · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I learned what it was like to make work with urgency as Audre said as though your life depended on it.” Pamela Sneed’s reflections are a work of luminous clarity, urgency, care, and beauty. A lyrical assortment of poetry and personal essays that together form a glimpse into the impact of the AIDS crisis on Black gay and lesbian communities, this book lends form and voice to those poets and artists whose lives were cut short. A real testament to the lifesaving power of art and writing and community and visibility.

[Matt Pedretti · Rating 5 out of 5]

10/10 my first time really reading poetry and I’m more than pleasantly surprised!

This collection is grounded and emotional, sharing so much about the physical and mental toll of living in America - anchored mostly by the AIDS epidemic and COVID-19.

I feel like many collections (including short stories) run the risk of hitting the same points too often, but this book really impressed me by touching on a lot of the same references or moments from Sneed’s life in various poems/pieces of the memoir to make vastly different points or observations.

Come for the title, STAY for the title poem.

[harvey ☆ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sneed has a voice that is powerful, assertive, and unapologetic in her poetry. She isn't afraid to show rage or negativity, but channels it into meaningful lessons about race, queerness, or life as a whole. Her poetry isn't always my style and is, to me, very clearly a style birthed in the digital age, but I like her allusions and how she connects literature (like Beloved, which she brings up many times) to her own life and racial themes.

[Erin Loken · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is much more than a lifetime in these poems and when she said it took her 16 years to write the first one (idk if that’s accurate, I already returned my library copy) it all made sense. Synthetic of some of my favorite writings but with the bruises of contemporary crises. All my admiration :’)

[Katy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not a poetry person but I was absorbed by these - made easier by their full sentences & narrative but still had a very delicate wrenching beautiful poetic quality. Seems like Pamela Sneed was ahead of the curve on the Beyoncé backlash

[Rasheed Newson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender and unflinching, "Funeral Diva" is so raw and vulnerable -- and therein lies its strength. Sneed's poetry and essays can be haunting, but these are the kind of ghosts (and questions) we should wrestle with in the middle of the night.

[elly · Rating 3 out of 5]

i really wanted to love this but the overly narrative style of poetry was not for me. too much of telling and not showing. in sneed’s defense i think these poems are meant to be performed, so reading it in text form probably didn’t do it justice.

[Adam Burnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A secular saint, Sneed’s poetry is frank, compassionate, and rejuvenating. In the year of a pandemic, Sneed’s macro/micro view on grief, community, (be)longing, loss, and history is bittersweet and welcome medicine. I recommend everyone grab a copy.

[Jailene · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a unique take on the topics presented in this book. First time reading a memoir and this book blew all my expectations out of the water. Very important topics she dived into pertaining to POC & LGBTQ+ people. Some of the poems truly blew me away.

[Yvelisse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fell in love with this piece and cried multiple times reading it. Pamela speaks from her heart, and it feels like such a vulnerable read that really helped me feel a lot of grief and pain that I needed to feel. Thank you Pamela for this beautiful book!

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I made a copy of a poem to teach even though I was reading it for fun. Not a huge poetry guy, but I enjoyed it thoroughly. The autobiographical nature of the poems and the prose stories helped me really get invested.

[Adrian Shanker · Rating 5 out of 5]

An urgent and timely poetic memoir