THERE'S A REVOLUTION OUTSIDE, MY LOVE

Reflections on racism from 40 writers.

Pulitzer Prize winner Smith, former poet laureate of the U.S., and Freeman, an executive editor at Knopf, gather poems, letters, and essays, most previously published in Literary Hub, bearing witness to systemic oppression and racial injustice. Angry, rueful, and defiant, the impressive roster of award-winning writers and academics portrays a nation wracked by pain. “There’s a revolution outside, my love,” journalist and cultural critic Kirsten West Savali writes in a moving letter to her son. “Where in the world is safe for you, my beautiful, beautiful boy?” Jasmon Drain, addressing his daughter, reflects that during the pandemic, she must wear two masks: one, her skin color; the other, protection against the virus. “Your born mask brought fear. This new one redoubles it,” he writes. “There’s no vaccine for who you’ll be or how you’ll be viewed, for the unseen or visible parts that will ofttimes be assumed of you.” Protests against police brutality inspired many pieces: “Like an arrow,” writes Native American writer Layli Long Soldier, “the images of George Floyd pierced my soul.” Living in Madison, Wisconsin, where he teaches creative writing, poet Amaud Jamaul Johnson describes “the Fault Lines of Midwestern Racism”: insidious expressions of prejudice among Whites who treat him like “a kind of mascot, a pet Negro, that one Black body in the coffee shop or at the private pool; I’ve become everyone’s one Black friend.” Francisco Goldman compares racist dictators to Trump: “The aftereffects of an evil dictatorship are hard to get rid of, to scrub clean. It usually involves a steadfast struggle, and justice is the only remedy.” In “A Letter to Black America,” Smith invokes Black solidarity, exhorting her readers to “revel in the depth and the flair and the belief and the secrecy of Blackness. We are lucky to be who we are, and we know it.” Other contributors include Edwidge Danticat, Gregory Pardlo, Ross Gay, and Camille T. Dungy.

An eloquent and urgent collection.