From the self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” these soaring, urgent essays on the power of women, poetry and anger are filled with darkness and light. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.