Sifting Your Life, and Gathering Pearls is the manifestation of more than six decades of poetry and prose, and the love of written and spoken word. Readers are witness to an elegantly crafted, and at times stark, slideshow of the American south, from The Great Depression, through World War II and Vietnam, while still settling into quip and delightful remembrances of what true friendship and compassion look like over decades of caring. Realist and Renaissance Woman merged, she has a gift for capturing the spectrum of blessings, joy, and grief, as well as highlighting the segregated south and cultural hypocrisy we continue to encounter today. Bringing forth from her ancestors, the strength, compassion, and resolve to bring balance to social inequality, Joy's writings about her own friends and family bring full-circle the impressions of seeing the raw realness of human beings ... family and stranger alike. This collection of poetry nudges readers to a higher awareness in their interactions with one another and with the world.