There's a revolution outside, my love : letters from a crisis

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Title:

There's a revolution outside, my love : letters from a crisis

ISBN:

9780593314692

Physical Description:

xvii, 299 pages ; 21 cm.

Subject Term:

Social problems -- United States -- History -- 21st century -- Public opinion.

COVID-19 Pandemic, 2020- -- United States -- Public opinion.

Geographic Term:

United States -- Social conditions -- 1980-2020 -- Public opinion

United States -- Politics and government -- 2017-2021 -- Public opinion.

Genre:

Essays.

Added Author:

Smith, Tracy K.

Freeman, John, 1974-

Summary:

" Now is an extraordinary time. Across the country, people are losing their loved ones, their livelihoods, their homes, and even their own lives to COVID-19. Despite the pandemic, countless protests erupted this summer over the recurring loss of Black lives. Reverberations of shock and outrage remain with us all. There's a Revolution Outside, My Love captures and articulates all of these roiling sentiments unleashed by a profound national reckoning. Drawing its title from a powerful letter to her son by Kirsten West Savali, the book fans out from there, offering a rich and intimate view of the change we underwent. Composed of searing letters, essays, poems, reflections, and screeds, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love highlights the work of some of our most powerful and insightful writers who hail from across a range of backgrounds and from almost all fifty states. Among them, these writers have brought home four Pulitzers, two National Book Awards, a fistful of Whitings, and numerous citations in best American poetry, short story, and essay compilations. They are noisy with beauty, and their pieces ring louder and clearer than ever before. Galvanizing and lyrical, this is a deeply profound anthology of writing filled with pain and beauty, warmth and intimacy. A remarkable feat of empathy, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love offers solace in a time of swirling protest, change, and violence reminding us of the human scale of the upheaval, and providing hope for a kinder future."

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	306.0973 THE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	306.0973 THE	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Wildwood Library (Mahtomedi)	306.0973 THE	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

This kaleidoscopic portrait of an unprecedented time brings together some of our most treasured writers today--Edwidge Danticat, Layli Long Soldier, Monica Youn, Julia Alvarez, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor--to give voice to the unthinkable grief and hopeful possibilities born in an era of revolution and change.

"A maelstrom of grief, anger, fear and confusion, with glimmers of gratitude and hope: a comprehensive emotional document of a moment."-- New York Times Book Review

Now is an extraordinary time. Across the country, people are losing their loved ones, their livelihoods, their homes, and even their own lives to COVID-19. Despite the pandemic, countless protests erupted this summer over the recurring loss of Black lives. Reverberations of shock and outrage remain with us all. There's a Revolution Outside, My Love captures and articulates all of these roiling sentiments unleashed by a profound national reckoning.

Drawing its title from a powerful letter to her son by Kirsten West Savali, the book fans out from there, offering a rich and intimate view of the change we underwent. Composed of searing letters, essays, poems, reflections, and screeds, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love highlights the work of some of our most powerful and insightful writers who hail from across a range of backgrounds and from almost all fifty states. Among them, these writers have brought home four Pulitzers, two National Book Awards, a fistful of Whitings, and numerous citations in best American poetry, short story, and essay compilations. They are noisy with beauty, and their pieces ring louder and clearer than ever before.

Galvanizing and lyrical, this is a deeply profound anthology of writing filled with pain and beauty, warmth and intimacy. A remarkable feat of empathy, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love offers solace in a time of swirling protest, change, and violence--reminding us of the human scale of the upheaval, and providing hope for a kinder future.

Author Notes

TRACY K. SMITH is the author of four books of poetry, including Life on Mars , winner of the Pulitzer Prize. Such Color: New and Selected Poems will be published in October. She is also the editor of an anthology, American Journal: Fifty Poems for Our Time , and cotranslator (with Changtai Bi) of My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree: Selected Poems by Yi Lei. Smith's memoir, Ordinary Light , was named a finalist for the National Book Award. From 2017 to 2019, Smith served two terms as the twenty-second Poet Laureate of the United States. She is currently a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

JOHN FREEMAN is the founder of Freeman's , the literary annual of new writing, and executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf. The author of five books, including The Park and Dictionary of the Undoing, he has edited several other anthologies including Tales of Two Americas, a book about inequality in America, and Tales of Two Planets, which examines the climate crisis globally. He teaches at NYU.

Reviews (2)

Kirkus Review

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. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

The pandemic summer of 2020, a season of isolation, anxiety, anguish, police violence, and protest, inspired Pulitzer Prize--winning poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate Smith to reflect on the Freedom Summer of 1964, as she so incisively delineates in her preface, and to create, with co-editor Freeman, this clarion coast-to-coast record of "America's most recent Freedom Summer." Forty BIPOC writers and members of other marginalized groups present galvanizing poems and essays, most of which first appeared in Literary Hub. Poet Su Hwang, based in Minneapolis, where George Floyd was murdered by the police, addresses the surge in anti-Black and anti--Asian American racism. Claudia Castro Luna reports on the lockdown and protests in Seattle. The late Randall Kenan writes from North Carolina about a "new war against white supremacy." Nikky Finney addresses a letter to longtime U.S. representative and civil rights activist John Lewis; Craig Santos Perez admits his "survivor's guilt." Other contributors, including Julia Alvarez, Amaud Jamaul Johnson, and Layli Long Soldier, consider the legacy of traumas and the possibility of change. A potent and momentous in-the-moment response to an urgent and indelible time.

Tracy K. SmithPatricia SmithRandall KenanEdwidge DanticatSu HwangMichael Kleber-DiggsAmaud Jamaul JohnsonLayli Long SoldierSofian MerabetNyle FortDaniel PeñaClaudia Castro LunaPitchaya SudbanthadIndigo MoorTracy K. SmithJoshua BennettHonorée Fanonne JeffersAli BlackGregory PardloMajor JacksonJames NoëlDawn Lundy MartinIdrissa Simmonds-NastiliCynthia TuckerJasmon DrainCamille T. DungyRoss GaySamiya BashirHéctor TobarOscar VillalonManuel MuñozCraig Santos PerezJulia AlvarezNikky FinneyReginald Dwayne BettsLilly WachowskiMonica YounKeeanga-Yamahtta TaylorFrancisco GoldmanSasha LaPointeKirsten West Savali

Preface	p. xi
Salutation in Search Of	p. 3
Learning from the Ghosts of the Civil War	p. 12
Mourning	p. 16
Why the Rebellion Had to Begin Here	p. 24
On the Complex Flavors of Black Joy	p. 35
Letter from the Fault Lines of Midwestern Racism	p. 46
I Cannot Stop: A Response to the Murder of George Floyd	p. 54
Be Safe Out There (And Other American Delusions, Rhetorical and Otherwise)	p. 68
I Hated That I Had to See Your Face Through Plexiglass	p. 74
Let These Protests Bring Light to America	p. 80
Letter from a Seattle Protest	p. 90
Finding Justice in the Streets	p. 96
A Riotous Anodyne	p. 103
A Letter to Black America	p. 108
Where Is Black Life Lived?	p. 111
On the Endless Mourning of the Present	p. 118
On Protest, Laughter, and Finding Breath	p. 122
Letter to Juneteenth	p. 129
Letter from Burlington	p. 135
Black Prayer	p. 141
Sense	p. 143
Black Motherhood in Sleepless Times	p. 145
Letter to a Mother Who Survived and Thrived	p. 150
"Maybe" (Letter to a Daughter Who Will Wear Two Masks)	p. 154
This'll Hurt Me More	p. 158
Have I Ever Told You All the Courts I've Loved	p. 161
Letter from Exile: Finding Home in a Pandemic	p. 168
A Generational Uprising	p. 177
When the Shadow Is Looming	p. 182
From Plagues to Protests to Wildfires	p. 186
Postcards from a Quarantined Paradise	p. 191
Three Liberties: Past, Present, Yet to Come	p. 200
Letter to John Robert Lewis	p. 204
Kamala Harris, Mass Incarceration, and Me	p. 210
Refuse Fascism, at the Ballot Box and in the Street	p. 224
Why I'm Getting Out of the Boiler Room This Election	p. 229
Voting Trump Out Is Not Enough	p. 235
The Fall of Trump: On Presidents, Dictators, and Life After a Regime	p. 251
Thunder Song	p. 267
On Motherhood and Ancestral Resistance	p. 274

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Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (2)

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

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