Race and family
“My identity has always been tangled up in the fraught definitions of America’s racism.” So opens Cambridge-based author E. Dolores Johnson’s frank and illuminating memoir “Say I’m Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets and Love” (Chicago Review). Johnson’s parents — her father a black man, her mother a white woman — fled to Buffalo from Indianapolis so they could marry without violating Indiana’s anti-miscegenation laws. Johnson details her journey unearthing the secrets of her family, and in so doing, wrestles with identity, class, and education, aiming a potent lens at what it means to be biracial and shining more light on the racism that continues to sicken this country to this day. The book arrives just in advance of Loving Day on June 12, which marks the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s overturning of anti-miscegenation laws across the country, and Johnson will give a virtual reading with the Harvard Bookstore on June 17 at 7 p.m. For more information, visit harvard.com.
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Alchemical lyrics
Boston-based poet Allison Adair’s astonishing and luminous debut collection, “The Clearing” (Milkweed), out this week, and winner of the Max Ritvo Prize, throbs with the secrets that live behind the folktales. These earthy poems sink themselves in soil and wrap their roots around roots, in mud, in blood, in the pushing, pulsing farmy squelch of what it is to be a human animal on earth. In “Miscarriage,” Adair, who teaches at Grub Street and BU, writes of “the suck of wet bread separating/ from its crust.” Elsewhere, “bacon grease naps in secret/ cells.” These poems speak to the menace of time (“All warbles toward rot”), of desire, of what we can’t see — or won’t — but know is there without knowing. “A man pulls brown from the ground, an ancient weary worm — / no, wrong, rusted bridle bit still bitter in the hinge, rotten gunpowder/ lining the jowls of history’s sad horse.” The book is an alchemical feat, turning horror into beauty as Adair reveals what surges beneath — the violence, want, grief, thrill, and nameless fury. “Try shaking a firefly until he vomits/ daylight . . . / The neon gel smeared across your hand can light/ the way. Go ahead. Reach out for something dark.”
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Poetry fellows
The Academy of American Poets recently announced its Poet Laureate Fellows for 2020, honoring those who serve as poets laureate for their states, cities, counties, or in the Navajo Nation. Boston Poet Laureate Porsha Olayiwola, author of “i shimmer sometimes, too” (Button), is among the 23 honored Fellows this year, and a recipient of $50,000. The artistic director of MassLeap, she’s working to establish the Roxbury Poetry Festival for summer 2021, as well as putting together an anthology in collaboration with Haley House. Elsewhere in New England, these poets also were honored as Fellows: Stuart Kestenbaum of Maine, Margaret Gibson of Connecticut, Tina Cane of Rhode Island, Alexandria Peary of New Hampshire, and Mary Ruefle of Vermont.
Coming out
“I Hold a Wolf by the Ears” by Laura Van Den Berg (FSG)
“Pizza Girl” by Jean Kyoun Frazier (Doubleday)
“You Exist Too Much” by Zaina Arafat (Catapult)
Pick of the week
Percy Sutton at Books on the Square in Providence recommends “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi (Little, Brown): “Jason Reynolds has taken Ibram X. Kendi’s ‘Stamped from the Beginning’ and made it accessible for young adults, or any adult, for that matter. It covers the history of racist ideas in America, and the hope for a better future using the concept of antiracism. An enlightening, clear-cut treatise on racism and antiracism, giving us a look at where we are and where we could be. This book is a great starting point for an understanding of racism in America.”
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Nina MacLaughlin is the author of “Wake, Siren.” She can be reached at nmaclaughlin@gmail.com.