Confessions of a Barefaced Woman

Allison Joseph lives, writes, and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is part of the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University. She serves as Editor and Poetry Editor of Crab Orchard Review, moderator of the Creative Writers Opportunities List, and director of the Young Writers Workshop, a summer writers’ workshop for teen writers.

Confessions of a Barefaced Woman is the perfect title for Allison Joseph's latest and finest book. She is a force to be reckoned with in these direct, powerful poems. We know where she stands and why, and she welcomes us on the journey through these pages with humor, humility, and grace. She is a master of poetic form and technique, which she artfully integrates into her frank, honest, confiding voice. Whether the subject is African-American hair, the purchase of a first bra, junk food, or liars, or people such as Rick James, Dorothy Parker, Grace Jones, or that Other Allison, she tackles them all here with refreshing clarity and candor. If she has any more confessions, I want to hear them.—Jim Daniels, author of Birth Marks and Show and TellAllison Joseph’s Confessions of a Barefaced Woman is memoirist poetry, a journey of complicated girlhood to nuanced womanhood. The speaker grows from being a ‘Pesky Little Sister’ to a woman who is in a ‘marriage / saved by frozen foods’; from a child learning penmanship to a woman writing poems. Confessions is full of laughter, generosity, intellect, and deep questions about the trap of female beauty, particularly African-American beauty. Allison Joseph knows there is strength in vulnerability—her barefaced poems glow with ‘no second skin for [her] to wipe away.’—Denise Duhamel, author of Blowout"Enjoy a therapeutic sequence of confessions with Allison Joseph’s upcoming release: Confessions of a Barefaced Woman. Throughout this 117-page collection of poetry, Joseph explores the life of an African-American woman, yet her poetry is extremely touchable and relatable to all readers no matter what race or background. Joseph’s vivid imagery sticks with you even after you’ve put her book down. Her humor and her confessions are her strengths as she explores the intricate, frustrating, and beautiful life of a woman."—Julia Cirignano of juliasbookreviewssConfessions of a Barefaced Woman contains brave poems that address self-doubt and overcoming such doubt through finding role models in library books, black authors, and Nazi-fighting superheroes, such as Wonder Woman. Joseph’s lines are lean, musical, and sometimes funny, creating a personal song that weaves family history, feminism, and racial identity into an honest and bold collection: very much the poetry that we need right now.—Brian Fanelli, The Pedestal Magazine.com