Six Works by Black Authors to Read

A few books authored by Black writers that I’m looking forward to reading this February, including a most anticipated book (James) that will be published March 19, 2024.

1. The Trees: A Novel by Percival Everett —I’m reading this now. A tough opening of a book that tells of a series of brutal murders that take place in Money Mississippi. At each crime scene there is a second body of a man who resembles Emmett Till.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
Winner of the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
Finalist for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award
Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

2. James by Percival Everett (published in March, 2024)— Oh what I would have given to have this book all those years ago when I taught Huck Finn.  This is an insightful retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — all told through the eyes of Jim, an enslaved man making a bid for freedom on the Mississippi alongside Mark Twain’s Huck. I always thought Jim was the moral center of the novel. 

A most anticipated book of 2024.

3. Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward — What now feels like a few years ago, one of my book groups went on a reading spree of Ward’s books. Her fiction is often brutal and somehow at the same time compelling—connecting the past to the present.  Her novels are intriguing and so language-rich. This is a story of enslavement as told by a teenage girl, Annis.

4. Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adejei-Brenyah —a debut story collection about growing up Black in the USA.

5. Survival Math: Notes on an All America Family by Mitchell S. Jackson—This summer I spent nearly a week in Portland, Oregon and this account of what Jackson terms, the Other America, surely resonates. The title of the work comes from the calculations Jackson and his family made to survive. 

6. Spectral Evidence: Poems by Gregory Pardo — One aspect of this book of poems that caught my interest was the poetic focus on MOVE, the militant separatist group that was bombed by Philadelphia government in 1985. Last year, a painting of mine was selected to be the cover to a memoir by one of the few survivors of that bombing. The narrative biography, Osage Avenue: Coming of Age in the Summer of MOVE by Tony Gervasi was riveting, tragic, especially given the immense loss he suffers.  I’m curious as to how this history translates to poetry. 

On the Water by Moheb Soliman

 

M. A.Reilly, 2021

On the water

Moheb Soliman

And the world, entire
would load
before your eyes

And there's no more
And caches clear and all songs stream at once
The sound delayed, avatars retired

And all seasons complete at once
with the earth tilted on its axis no more
The weekend's lightning, languorous

arms stretched after lunch—you can't take more
And the robes are soaked; why,
they can't absorb another drop

and what's more
washes over unimpeded now
And there's more

The morning after
all justice meted out
all grudges would be lost

in the cloud
And power would go out
And all leisure would be more

radical then
And the fight would go out of you
with the world at your fingertips

guiding your hand
to the ends of luxury
It doesn't get any better than this

there's more
of the same
And who could want more

A Banquet by Jana Prikryl

 

M.A.Reilly, 2021

A Banquet

Jana Prikryl

But having braked all the way to the floor of the valleyit dawned on us the slope we'd have to climband it was night, you on the back of my bikewe'd passed the place that burned down—the peoplerich enough to continue to produce some kindof banquet, placing candles and dishes, in the ashesbeyond roof—so you said let's go home, but lookthe hill we came down is as steep as the hill ahead of us

Diving Into the Wreck By Adrienne Rich

 

An Atlas for Our Time (M.A. Reilly, 3.28.12) 

Diving Into the Wreck

By Adrienne Rich

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.
Rung after rung and still
the oxygen immerses me
the blue light
the clear atoms
of our human air.
I go down.
My flippers cripple me,
I crawl like an insect down the ladder
and there is no one
to tell me when the ocean
will begin.

First the air is blue and then
it is bluer and then green and then
black I am blacking out and yet
my mask is powerful
it pumps my blood with power
the sea is another story
the sea is not a question of power
I have to learn alone
to turn my body without force
in the deep element.

And now: it is easy to forget
what I came for
among so many who have always
lived here
swaying their crenellated fans
between the reefs
and besides
you breathe differently down here.

I came to explore the wreck.
The words are purposes.
The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail.
I stroke the beam of my lamp
slowly along the flank
of something more permanent
than fish or weed

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

This is the place.
And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair
streams black, the merman in his armored body.
We circle silently
about the wreck
we dive into the hold.
I am she: I am he

whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes
whose breasts still bear the stress
whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels
half-wedged and left to rot
we are the half-destroyed instruments
that once held to a course
the water-eaten log
the fouled compass

We are, I am, you are
by cowardice or courage
the one who find our way
back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera
a book of myths
in which
our names do not appear

From Song of Myself by Walt Whitman

 

M.A.Reilly, 2017

From Song of Myself

By Walt Whitman

I Celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

I, Too

The Dream Keeper (M.A.Reilly, 2014)

I, Too

By Langston Hughes

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong.

Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.

Nobody’ll dare

Say to me,

“Eat in the kitchen,”

Then.

Besides,

They’ll see how beautiful I am

And be ashamed—

I, too, am America.

#PoetryBreak:The Sky Over My Mother’s House/El cielo encima de la casa de mi madre

M.A. Reilly, 2016 The  Sky  Over  My  Mother’s  House by Jaime Manrique translated by Edith Grossman

It is a July night scented with gardenias. The moon and stars shine hiding the essence of the night. As darkness fell —with its deepening onyx shadows and the golden brilliance of the stars— my mother put the garden, her house, the kitchen, in order. Now, as she sleeps, I walk in her garden immersed in the solitude of the moment. I have forgotten the names of many trees and flowers and there used to be more pines where orange trees flower now. Tonight I think of all the skies I have pondered and once loved. Tonight the shadows around the house are kind. The sky is a camera obscura projecting blurred images. In my mother’s house the twinkling stars pierce me with nostalgia, and each thread in the net that surrounds this world is a wound that will not heal. *** El cielo encima de la casa de mi madre Es una noche de julio perfumada de gardenias. La luna y las estrellas brillan sin revelar la esencia de la noche. A través del anochecer —con sus gradaciones cada vez más intensas de ónix, y el resplandor dorado de los astros, de las sombras— mi madre ha ido ordenando su casa, el jardín, la cocina. Ahora, mientras ella duerme, yo camino en su jardín, inmerso en la soledad de esta hora. Se me escapan los nombres de muchos árboles y flores, y había más pinos antes donde los naranjos florecen ahora. Esta noche pienso en todos los cielos que he contemplado y que alguna vez amé. Esta noche las sombras alrededor de la casa son benignas. El cielo es una cámara oscura que proyecta imágenes borrosas. En la casa de mi madre los destellos de los astros me perforan con nostalgia, y cada hilo de la red que circunvala este universo es una herida que no sana

A Baker's Dozen: 13 Children's Poetry Books from 2018 (You'll Want Them All)

from Seeing Into Tomorrow - A Collection of Haikus by Richard Wright, photographs by Nina Crews

Crews, Nina & Richard Wright. (2018). Seeing Into Tomorrow. Illustrated by Nina Crews. Minneapolis, MN: Millbrook Press.

from In the Past

Elliot, David. (2018). In the Past: From Trilobites to Dinosaurs to Mammoths in More Than 500 Million Years. Illustrated by Matthew Trueman. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

Giovanni, Nikki. (2018). I Am Loved. Illustrated by Ashley Bryan. New York: Atheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books.

from An Extraordinary Ordinary Moth.

Gray, Karlin. (2018). An Extraordinary Ordinary Moth. Illustrated by Steliyana Doneva. Ann Arbor, MI: Sleeping Bear Press.

from A Place to Start a Family: Poems About Creatures That Build   - collage by Giles Laroche.

Harrison, David L. (2018). A Place to Start a Family: Poems About Creatures That Build  Illustrated by Giles Laroche. Watertown, MA: Charlesbridge.

Latham, Irene & Charles Waters. (2018). Can I Touch Your Hair? Poems of Race, Mistakes, and Friendship. Illustrated by Sean Qualls & Selina Aiko. Carolrhoda Books.

Metropolitan Museum of Art & Lee Bennett Hopkins (Ed). (2018). World Make Way: New Poems Inspired by Art from The Metropolitan Museum.  New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers.

Rosen, Michael J. (2018). The Horse's Haiku. Illustrated by Stan Fellows. Somerville, MA: Candlewick Press.

from Every Month Is a New Year: Celebrations Around the World. Collage by Susan Roth

Singer, Marilyn. (2018).  Every Month Is a New Year: Celebrations Around the World. Illustrated by Susan Roth. New York: Lee & low Books. Note: Will be Published on 4.16.18.

Tuttle, Sarah Grace. (2018). HIDDEN CITY: Poems of Urban Wildlife. Illustrated by Amy Schimler-Safford. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmand Publishing.

VanDerwater, Amy Ludwig. (2018). With My Hands: Poems About Making Thing. Illustrated by Lou Fancher and Steve Johnson. New York: Clarion.

from Earth Verse: Haiku from the Ground Up

Walker, Sally M. (2018). Earth Verse: Haiku from the Ground Up.  Illustrated by William Grill.  Somerset. MA: Candlewick.

from Did You Hear What I Heard?: Poems About School. 

Winters, Kay. (2018). Did You Hear What I Heard?: Poems About School. Illustrated by Patrice Barton. New York: Dial Books.

When Music Meets Poem: Kris Delmorst's "Strange Conversation"

Sea Impression (M.A. Reilly, printed on linen)

I really love Kris Delmhorst's interpretation of John Masefield's "Sea Fever" on a released album of hers, Strange Conversation (2006).  I could listen to it over and over again. 

Sea Fever
BY JOHN MASEFIELD

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking.
 
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; 
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.
 
I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

Her range is powerful. In contrast to the lulling and soulful "Sea Fever," her spirited take on e.e. cummings's poem "anyone lived in a pretty how town" is nothing less than rambunctious.  The whole album is excellent.   

[anyone lived in a pretty how town]

Celebrating a Small Moment in Time with Derrick Barnes and His Ode to the Fresh Cut

Looking for a read aloud book to help young people understand the concept of a small moment?  I'd advise you take a look at Derrick Barnes's Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, illustrated by Gordon C. James and published by Agate Publishing.  This picture book chronicles a trip to the barbershop.  Part love letter, part history--Barnes's poetic voice comes through with just enough detail to make the ordinary feel royal. For example, after the haircut, Barnes writes:

It's the mention of the sting from apple green alcohol or witch hazel that catches my eye. We have smelt this too and know how a fresh shave alongside some alcohol allows for a bit of a sit-up-and-notice moment. It is these types of details that breathe life into this account.

The writing is memorable and populated with metaphor, rhythm, and diction. The language moves and moves through you.No wonder it received the 2018 Newbery Honor Award for its writing. It was well deserved.

This book also garnered a 2018 Caldecott Honor Book and a 2018 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor. The book is lush, populated with Gordon James's expressive oil paintings that slip and slide across each page. Impressionistic  jewels like this:

The angles, soft focus, and details work in concert to extend Barnes' words by providing images of the people and place where a Fresh Cut is most celebrated and providing an energy that works with the celebratory nature of the text.

This is a winner book.  I hope you'll take a look and find some young people to read it to.