Sweating It Out by Deborah Turner

Name: Sweating It Out by Deborah Turner
SKU: 6983
Availability: InStock

$14.99

Fittingly, these poems express an often joyful sense of play, and make rich use of multiple meanings, history and allusion. They use sports as a way in to poetry, and as a way in to deep issues of identity and transformation. I can imagine using these poems as models and mentor texts, and as readings in a variety of inquiry units that will grab young men and women because they connect to the most compelling issues associated with growing up.

–Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Distinguished Professor of English Education at Boise State University, Author of READING DON’T FIX NO CHEVYS: LITERACY IN THE LIVES OF YOUNG MEN

“Deborah Turner’s potent and visionary poetry resonates with bold courage, humor, and emotional truth. Conversational and accessible, yet exquisitely crafted and pulsing with rhythm, the poems in this chapbook call out to be read, contemplated, and read again.”

–Irene Reti, Oral Historian, Publisher of HerBooks Feminist Press, and Coeditor of Women Runners: Stories of Transformation (Breakaway Books)

“Deborah Turner‘s Sweating it Out is a lyrical narrative of embodiment that works literally and metaphorically with the metaphors of sport. Teaching us how fully occupying one’s flesh is also the process of coming to voice, these poems provide a moving account of what it means to achieve each.”

–Leslie Heywood is Professor of English & Creative Writing at Binghamton University. She is the author of the feminist sport memoir Pretty Good for a Girl (Simon & Schuster) and the poetry book The Proving Grounds (Red Hen Press) among others.

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Sweating It Out

by Deborah Turner

$14.99, paper

978-1-64662-256-6

2020

Each of the relatable poems in Sweating It Out plays in a different arena—from a player on a basketball court coping with hits and misses of blended families, to a father-daughter duo lobbing their love back and forth over the net in a battle that only serves to strengthen the bond between them. Collectively, Deborah Turner’s work illustrates how the strength needed for real life has its roots in play. In this volume, she shows us the implications of discovering and breaking rules of engagement, whether in community, family, love, or sports. Beloved African-American traditions like call and response (“Double Dutch”) and the blues (“Coming Down”) echo throughout Sweating making this work not only accessible, but also thought-provoking. A mid-way meditation (“Time Out”) gives us time to think about being on the receiving end of unwanted bias, all too familiar in the era of the Me Too Movement. In a tribute piece (“Juneteenth”), Turner gives testament to those whose historical struggles to cultivate change opened the way for the rest of us to keep playing today. Like any good workout, the volume concludes with a (proverbial) shower (“When I Rise”), giving hope to anyone still struggling. Overall, Turner shows how sports easily translate into everyone’s personal experience and becomes a metaphor for life itself. Whether for reflecting on your own journey, wanting a gift for someone who appreciates sports, or trying to inspire an athlete who has a story to tell, this volume will have readers quietly cheering!

In Sweating It Out, Deborah Turner shows us another side of discovering and breaking the rules of engagement whether in community, family, love, or sport. A librarian, educator, and researcher, Turner now writes full-time. Currently, she’s working on a memoir based on her life in West Philadelphia; her first novel—Harvesting Her Own Cranberries; and, more poems.

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