Pamela Sneed’s prose and poetry can reach out and grab you. They did me. She reads four poems from her new memoir, Funeral Diva, on this week’s Out in the Bay and shares some of her life story. Funeral Diva, published by San Francisco’s City Lights, is a powerful collection of poems and prose described as a “coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s.” It chronicles Sneed’s life as a proud Black lesbian and the impact of the AIDS pandemic on Black queer life. It’s also a courageous commentary about today’s COVID pandemic, divisive politics and pervasive social inequities.