Fourteen

Abstract

<italic>Fourteen<italic> takes on difficult topics such as chattel slavery, sexual violence, racism and discrimination. I use music, tangents and a prejudicial preference for the number fourteen as tools to aid my telling. The telling of <italic>Fourteen<italic> is, consciously, a slice of United States history. It is a personal history; it is autobiography; it is biography and it is African American history. <italic>Fourteen<italic> is written as creative nonfiction and embraces a rich and poetic language that answer the questions, what does it mean to be part of a family? What does it mean to be a part of a lineage? How do we think about lineage and family in the context of African American history, where family and lineage have been contained, reshaped, or torn asunder through slavery and sexual violence?"