I feel the stress on my shoulders
dissipating
as I open up to the quiet
and peace offered as a greeting
from those I love.
Tonight I’m not going to say
no justice/no peace.
Tonight I’m going to say
peace be unto you;
as it is unto me.

Still Living on my Feet is the follow up to Tichaona Chinyelu’s first book, In the Whirlwind, which was rooted in a sense of hard-hitting revolutionary black love. However, in this sophomore effort, Tichaona brings the revolutionary essence from deep within the trough of her Y chromosomes; lacing it with truths, humor and sisterly compassion. Still uncompromising, Ms. Chinyelu overtly articulates the primacy of black women without negating their compliment, black men. Using a sentence she coined a while back; the line of my back needed straightening more than my hair, as her muse, Tichaona retraces the spiritual experience she had in her early twenties revolving around the grandmother she never met. Drawing on her desire to respond righteously, she encapsulated that experience of love and consciousness to produce the progressive, relevant and textured writings of Still Living on my Feet.