Dreaming of Endangered Species - Paperback

by Anand Prahlad (Author)

Dreaming of Endangered Species explores issues of health and illness, disability and cure, and human frailty and vulnerability in an age of global unease and uncertainty. It maps a tension between the infinite and finite, between the concrete and ethereal. In some ways, it is a celebration of the mundane, by which I mean the world of everyday objects, of plants and animals, scents, textures, movements, water, and phases of the moon. But interwoven with this testament to ineffable beauty, this celebratory mode, are reflections on my cancer, for example, my autistic strivings, my gender queer identity, and the plight of the natural world. A recurrent thread that runs through the manuscript is the idea of dreaming, which offers a kind of poetic membrane, a connective tissue that softens some of the weighty concerns and allows them a more muted resonance than they might otherwise have.

Author Biography

ANAND PRAHLAD is the author of two books of poems, Hear My Story and Other Poems, and As Good As Mango, and an award-winning memoir, The Secret Life of A Black Aspie. He has also published critical articles and books on black folklore and the proverb, including Reggae Wisdom: Proverbs in Jamaican Music and African American Proverbs in Context, and he edited the three-volume set The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore and the one-volume The Greenwood Student Encyclopedia of African American Folklore.