1919 | 
pickA book of poetry reflecting on the Chicago race riots of 1919. I had never even heard of the events that took place, which is not surprising as black history is often not taught in schools. Glad to fill that gap a bit and learned some things. Thanks to Libro.fm for the free audiobook!
#BookMoods Day 19: This story is #ToldInVerse, I think. Looking forward to reading it. Recent book haul.
Ewing weaves the history of the 1919 race riot in Chicago into the idiom of modern Black vernacular, biblical imagery, and so much more. Her work is groundbreaking.
“100 years ago, before the Burning Days, they rode in metal carriages, grandma says. rich people did. big iron capsules on fat rubber wheels. like a buggy, but with no horses ... the autos took their roar from a vapor, drawn from the ground. an ancient something. something that could run out. i asked her ‘well what does it mean to move on earth through the will of something with no heart inside?‘” — upon seeing a picture of a car in a school book
pickWhether it‘s through the voice of a train in the midst of the Great Migration, a haunting trio of jump rope rhymes, a glimpse of a carless future, or a black-out poem of an email from her apartment management after the 2018 Jason Van Dyke verdict, Ewing creates entry points of engaging with the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 in places you would never think to look. A must read for anyone contemplating how to reckon with the past as an American today.
pickPHENOMENAL! POWERFUL!
Based on the events of Red Summer in Chicago, some of these poems were so powerful you had to set the book down and take some time to give them the reflection they were due, to turn your face from the pain, to honor the memory of those lost.
In reading this collection, you can hear the cry echoing down from 1919, “#BlackLivesMatter!”
pickWhile researching her book on school closures in Chicago, Ewing read a report titled ‘The Negro in Chicago: A Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot,‘ published in 1922. The poems in this collection, each of which Ewing describes as “in conversation with a passage” from that report, along with photographs from that era bring the 1919 race riot, the people, & the city, vividly & powerfully to life. An excellent poetry collection. Recommended.
“I like to use poems as what-if machines and as time-traveling devices, and I‘m grateful to have had the chance to do that with this project.”
pickReally gets in there, in your heart, and roots around, looking for the right tool.
#race #riot #chicago #southside #justice #collectivememory #narrative #history #poetry
Wow, this is a powerful book. Halfway through and several poems are just _chilling_. Makes SUCH a difference when you have #historical #context.
#race #riot #history #chicago #poetry #100yearsago #alongwaytogo #notaTPSreport
pickEve L. Ewing moves effortlessly between past and present, reimagined past and visions of a future all connected by the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. Lines of poetry made me gasp and so to did statements of fact. This book contains so much: history, sociology, sorrow and anger. Most of all it bursts with Ewing‘s love for her people - the one‘s who‘ve gone before her, those here now and those yet to be born.
