The Red Shoes

“Disability Poetics: A Conversation with Sheila Black” by Ilya Kaminsky (2022)

In this interview for Poetry International, poet Ilya Kaminsky talks with Black about the importance of disability poetics as a movement. Besides offering up her development as a Confessional poet, Black notes that she experienced a realization when pursuing disability poetry. Instead of feeling “deficient,” she discovered that “[p]eople who occupy so called ‘non-normative’ bodies and minds . . .have the gift of perspective.” This relates to “The Red Shoes,” as the speaker offers an alternate ending for Andersen’s heroine in which she receives “wooden” (Line 48) limbs to replace the ones amputated (thus creating a non-normative body). This metaphorically shows that the speaker, too, is emotionally changing their mindset, determined to go forward despite suffering.

“On what is lost and what is possible in exile: An Interview with Sheila Black” By Jessica Suzanne Stokes (2019)

This interview begins with an introductory analysis, which posits “The Red Shoes” as a significant example of how people might connect in a particular time and space “through experiences of pain and exile.” After using specific examples from Black’s poetry, Stokes interviews Black about the expectations for supposed normalcy, the relationship between self and disability, and the necessity of community. Black notes that to have “[t]he company of people who have experienced disability from within is affirming and liberating [because. . . you] don’t have to be constantly performing or explaining your disability. That frees up a lot of space for creativity.”

“A Poet and Leader: Sheila Black” by Jasmina Wellinghoff (2015)

In this feature for the website San Antonio Woman, Wellinghoff details Black’s childhood history regarding her disability, her activism, and how she was connected to Gemini Ink. Wellinghoff notes that as a young woman, due to living in several different countries because her father was a diplomat, Black became aware of the differences between herself and others. This didn’t just include her disability but an awareness of the “great deal of poverty in many places, which taught her that life could be uncertain and precarious,” something she directly addresses in “The Red Shoes."

“St. Luke’s Yields on Drug Facility” by Thomas F. Brady (1970)

This article published in The New York Times clarifies the reference to “St. // Luke’s” (Lines 32-33) in the poem. In 1970, there was a “four-day sit-in” by leaders of “black and Puerto Rican community groups, Mothers Against Drugs and the Academy for Black and Latin Education” to motivate St. Luke’s hospital to “participate in rehabilitating young drug users.” From the article, St. Luke’s Hospital had a prominent psychiatric wing. This may date the poem’s time period to 1970 or afterwards.