Talk Stories

Download Talk Stories PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374706255
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Talk Stories by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book Talk Stories written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2002-01-09 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From "The Talk of the Town," Jamaica Kincaid's first impressions of snobbish, mobbish New York Talk Pieces is a collection of Jamaica Kincaid's original writing for the New Yorker's "Talk of the Town," composed during the time when she first came to the United States from Antigua, from 1978 to 1983. Kincaid found a unique voice, at once in sync with William Shawn's tone for the quintessential elite insider's magazine, and (though unsigned) all her own--wonderingly alive to the ironies and screwball details that characterized her adopted city. New York is a town that, in return, fast adopts those who embrace it, and in these early pieces Kincaid discovers many of its hilarious secrets and urban mannerisms. She meets Miss Jamaica, visiting from Kingston, and escorts the reader to the West Indian-American Day parade in Brooklyn; she sees Ed Koch don his "Cheshire-cat smile" and watches Tammy Wynette autograph a copy of Lattimore's Odyssey; she learns the worlds of publishing and partying, of fashion and popular music, and how to call a cauliflower a crudite. The book also records Kincaid's development as a young writer--the newcomer who sensitively records her impressions here takes root to become one of our most respected authors.

A Small Place

Download A Small Place PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466828838
Total Pages : 96 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis A Small Place by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book A Small Place written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2000-04-28 with total page 96 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant look at colonialism and its effects in Antigua--by the author of Annie John "If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an airport named after him--why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . ." So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies where she grew up. Lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode, A Small Place cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.

My Garden (Book)

Download My Garden (Book) PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466828749
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis My Garden (Book) by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book My Garden (Book) written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2001-05-15 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our finest writers on one of her greatest loves. Jamaica Kincaid's first garden in Vermont was a plot in the middle of her front lawn. There, to the consternation of more experienced friends, she planted only seeds of the flowers she liked best. In My Garden (Book) she gathers all she loves about gardening and plants, and examines it generously, passionately, and with sharp, idiosyncratic discrimination. Kincaid's affections are matched in intensity only by her dislikes. She loves spring and summer but cannot bring herself to love winter, for it hides the garden. She adores the rhododendron Jane Grant, and appreciates ordinary Blue Lake string beans, but abhors the Asiatic lily. The sources of her inspiration -- seed catalogues, the gardener Gertrude Jekyll, gardens like Monet's at Giverny -- are subjected to intense scrutiny. She also examines the idea of the garden on Antigua, where she grew up. My Garden (Book) is an intimate, playful, and penetrating book on gardens, the plants that fill them, and the persons who tend them.

Mr. Potter

Download Mr. Potter PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 0374706166
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (747 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Mr. Potter by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book Mr. Potter written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2003-07-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of an ordinary man, his century, and his home: "Kincaid's most poetic and affecting novel to date" (Robert Antoni, The Washington Post Book World) Jamaica Kincaid's first obssession, the island of Antigua, comes vibrantly to life under the gaze of Mr. Potter, an illiterate taxi chauffeur who makes his living along the roads that pass through the only towns he has ever seen and the graveyard where he will be buried. The sun shines squarely overhead, the ocean lies on every side, and suppressed passion fills the air. Ignoring the legacy of his father, a poor fisherman, and his mother, who committed suicide, Mr. Potter struggles to live at ease amid his surroundings: to purchase a car, to have girlfriends, and to shake off the encumbrance of his daughters—one of whom will return to Antigua after he dies and tell his story with equal measures of distance and sympathy. In Mr. Potter, Kincaid breathes life into a figure unlike any other in contemporary fiction, an individual consciousness emerging gloriously out of an unexamined life.

My Brother

Download My Brother PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466828862
Total Pages : 216 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis My Brother by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book My Brother written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 1998-11-09 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jamaica Kincaid's brother Devon Drew died of AIDS on January 19, 1996, at the age of thirty-three. Kincaid's incantatory, poetic, and often shockingly frank recounting of her brother's life and death is also a story of her family on the island of Antigua, a constellation centered on the powerful, sometimes threatening figure of the writer's mother. My Brother is an unblinking record of a life that ended too early, and it speaks volumes about the difficult truths at the heart of all families. My Brother is a 1997 National Book Award Finalist for Nonfiction.

See Now Then

Download See Now Then PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466827688
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis See Now Then by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book See Now Then written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In See Now Then, the brilliant and evocative new novel from Jamaica Kincaid—her first in ten years—a marriage is revealed in all its joys and agonies. This piercing examination of the manifold ways in which the passing of time operates on the human consciousness unfolds gracefully, and Kincaid inhabits each of her characters—a mother, a father, and their two children, living in a small village in New England—as they move, in their own minds, between the present, the past, and the future: for, as she writes, "the present will be now then and the past is now then and the future will be a now then." Her characters, constrained by the world, despair in their domestic situations. But their minds wander, trying to make linear sense of what is, in fact, nonlinear. See Now Then is Kincaid's attempt to make clear what is unclear, and to make unclear what we assumed was clear: that is, the beginning, the middle, and the end. Since the publication of her first short-story collection, At the Bottom of the River, which was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, Kincaid has demonstrated a unique talent for seeing beyond and through the surface of things. In See Now Then, she envelops the reader in a world that is both familiar and startling—creating her most emotionally and thematically daring work yet.

Annie John

Download Annie John PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Everbind
ISBN 13 : 9780784809334
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (93 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Annie John by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book Annie John written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Everbind. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annie John's story is so touching and familiar it could be happening to any of us, anywhere, any time, any place. And that's exactly the book's strength, its wisdom, its truth. --The New York Times Book Review

Party

Download Party PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Akashic Books
ISBN 13 : 1617757284
Total Pages : 37 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (177 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Party by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book Party written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Akashic Books. This book was released on 2019-06-04 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Seeing the story illustrated with artwork by Ricardo Cortés gives it new life, and gives readers a whole new way of being drawn in. Kincaid and Cortés also capture the kind of wonder that children see new experiences through, making this adventure a particularly heartwarming read." --Bookstr "Party has layers. It functions as a subtle message about what it means to witness horror to such a degree that we lose our language for it; it is a quiet story about coming of age, suddenly, as a young black girl because of what the world shows us. It is about the many words our silence can hold, the way our absences can ring as loudly and discordantly as the words we do feel able to say." --Literary Hub "The book's effervescent pictures, and its playful, secretive ending, will have young readers paging through it again and again, constructing stories and observations of their own. Party: A Mystery is an ideal gift for young readers. The book will put kids's curiosity to work during a busy holiday season." --Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine "Kincaid believes that, in illustrating Party, Cortés only enhanced the story's enigma, providing a greater sense of intrigue and playfulness likely to appeal to young readers." --Publishers Weekly, from a Miami Book Fair 2019 feature "Each girl is so unique and amiable that readers will be drawn into the mystery before they know it, desperately searching for clues. Cortés's expressive paintings help to show the characters' personalities and the setting, providing some hidden hints to readers...A charming book about character and suspense that will be intriguing to many young mystery readers." --School Library Journal "This story by acclaimed author Kincaid gets new life in this picture book with lush, glowingly realistic illustrations...The artwork is gorgeous and the feeling of being a kid who's a little too short to see what's happening will likely resonate with the target audience." --Booklist "This send-up of the Nancy Drew mysteries by Kincaid first appeared as a 1980 New Yorker story about a gala celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first book's publication. Here, Kincaid's piece is recast as a picture book with dramatic artwork by Cortés...Detailed, almost photographically realistic portraits of girls and partygoers by Cortés, shown against marble architectural backdrops that suggest the New York Public Library, engage throughout...A gem." --Publishers Weekly "A beautifully drawn picture book adventure story that promises questions that will grab children ages 3-7--but does not guarantee an answer! Unique, uncommon, entertaining, and thoroughly 'kid friendly,' Party: A Mystery is extraordinary and highly recommended." --Midwest Book Review "The illustrations and realism make Party a satisfying read that will resonate with younger siblings (or anyone who has experienced the frustration of ignorance). Two other aspects of Party enhance what is already a thoroughly satisfying book: the ending and the fact that the party is in celebration of Nancy Drew." --Glass of Wine, Glass of Milk Three girls--Pam, Bess, and Sue--attend a party to celebrate the publication of the first of the Nancy Drew mystery books. There are many distractions at the fancy affair: flower arrangements, partygoers, refreshments, and lots and lots of marble. Suddenly, the oldest girl, Pam, sees what can only be described as something truly...bilious...not good! Bess sees it too. The youngest, Sue, does not, and as usual she has a hard time getting anyone to tell her anything. Party: A Mystery is a beautifully drawn adventure story that promises questions that will grab children, but does not guarantee an answer.

Lucy

Download Lucy PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466828854
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Lucy by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book Lucy written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2002-09-04 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coming-of-age story of one of Jamaica Kincaid's most admired creations--available now in an e-book edition. Lucy, a teenage girl from the West Indies, comes to America to work as an au pair for a wealthy couple. She begins to notice cracks in their beautiful façade at the same time that the mysteries of own sexuality begin to unravel. Jamaica Kincaid has created a startling new heroine who is destined to win a place of honor in contemporary fiction.

The Autobiography of My Mother

Download The Autobiography of My Mother PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 13 : 1466828846
Total Pages : 191 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (668 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Autobiography of My Mother by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book The Autobiography of My Mother written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 1996-01-15 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the recipient of the 2010 Clifton Fadiman Medal, an unforgettable novel of one woman's courageous coming-of-age Jamaica Kincaid's The Autobiography of My Mother is a story of love, fear, loss, and the forging of a character, an account of one woman's inexorable evolution evoked in startling and magical poetry. Powerful, disturbing, stirring, Jamaica Kincaid's novel is the deeply charged story of a woman's life on the island of Dominica. Xuela Claudette Richardson, daughter of a Carib mother and a half-Scottish, half-African father, loses her mother to death the moment she is born and must find her way on her own. Kincaid takes us from Xuela's childhood in a home where she could hear the song of the sea to the tin-roofed room where she lives as a schoolgirl in the house of Jack Labatte, who becomes her first lover. Xuela develops a passion for the stevedore Roland, who steals bolts of Irish linen for her from the ships he unloads, but she eventually marries an English doctor, Philip Bailey. Xuela's is an intensely physical world, redolent of overripe fruit, gentian violet, sulfur, and rain on the road, and it seethes with her sorrow, her deep sympathy for those who share her history, her fear of her father, her desperate loneliness. But underlying all is "the black room of the world" that is Xuela's barrenness and motherlessness.

At the Bottom of the River

Download At the Bottom of the River PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Picador USA
ISBN 13 : 1250322413
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis At the Bottom of the River by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book At the Bottom of the River written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Picador USA. This book was released on 2024-10-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kincaid’s first book, which announced the arrival of a singular talent, “will burn on your shelf” (Derek Walcott). Reading Jamaica Kincaid is to plunge gently into another way of seeing both the physical world and its elusive inhabitants. Her voice is, by turns, naively whimsical and biblical in its assurance, and it speaks of what is partly remembered, partly divined. The memories often concern a childhood in the Caribbean—family, manners, and landscape—as distilled and transformed by Kincaid’s special style and vision. Kincaid leads her readers to consider, as if for the first time, the powerful ties between mother and child; the beauty and destructiveness of nature; the gulf between the masculine and the feminine; the significance of familiar things—a house, a cup, a pen. Transfiguring our human form and our surroundings—shedding skin, darkening an afternoon, painting a perfect place—these stories tell us something we didn’t know, in a way we hadn’t expected. Originally published in 1978, At the Bottom of the River immediately established Jamaica Kincaid as an inimitable, vibrant, and hauntingly beautiful voice in contemporary literature.

Understanding Jamaica Kincaid

Download Understanding Jamaica Kincaid PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN 13 : 9781570036880
Total Pages : 180 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (368 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Understanding Jamaica Kincaid by : Justin D. Edwards

Download or read book Understanding Jamaica Kincaid written by Justin D. Edwards and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Understanding Jamaica Kincaid introduces readers to the prizewinning author best known for the novels Annie John, Lucy, and The Autobiography of My Mother. Justin D. Edwards surveys Jamaica Kincaid's life, career, and major works of fiction and nonfiction to identify and discuss her recurring interests in familial relations, Caribbean culture, and the aftermath of colonialism and exploitation. In addition to examining the haunting prose, rich detail, and personal insight that have brought Kincaid widespread praise, Edwards also identifies and analyzes the novelist's primary thematic concerns - the flow of power and the injustices faced by people undergoing social, economic, and political change. Edwards chronicles Kincaid's childhood in Antigua, her development as a writer, and her early journalistic work as published in the New Yorker and other magazines. In separate chapters he provides critical appraisals of Kincaid's early novels; her works of nonfiction, including My Brother and A Small Place; and her more recent novels, including Mr. Potter. colonization and neocolonization and warns her readers about the dire consequences of inequality in the era of globalization.

My Favorite Plant

Download My Favorite Plant PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Picador
ISBN 13 : 125033151X
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (53 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis My Favorite Plant by : Jamaica Kincaid

Download or read book My Favorite Plant written by Jamaica Kincaid and published by Picador. This book was released on 2024-04-02 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A delightful compendium of writing on plants. The passion for gardening and the passion for words come together in this inspired anthology, a collection of essays on topics as diverse as beans and roses, by writers who garden and by gardeners who write. Among the contributors are Christopher Lloyd, on poppies; Marina Warner, who remembers the Guinée rose; and Henri Cole, who offers poems on the bearded iris and on peonies. There is also an explanation of the sexiness of castor beans from Michael Pollan and an essay from Maxine Kumin on how, as Henry David Thoreau put it, one "[makes] the earth say beans instead of grass." Most of the essays are new in print, but Colette, Katharine S. White, D. H. Lawrence, and several other old favorites make appearances. Jamaica Kincaid, the much-admired writer and a passionate gardener herself, rounds up this diverse crew. A wonderful gift for green thumbs, My Favorite Plant is a happy collection of fresh takes on old friends. Other contributors include: Hilton Als Mary Keen Ken Druse Duane Michals Michael Fox David Raffeld Ian Frazier Graham Stuart Thomas Daniel Hinkley Wayne Winterrowd

In Search of Annie Drew

Download In Search of Annie Drew PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : University of Virginia Press
ISBN 13 : 0813938457
Total Pages : 264 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (139 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis In Search of Annie Drew by : Daryl Cumber Dance

Download or read book In Search of Annie Drew written by Daryl Cumber Dance and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is perhaps no other person who has been so often and obsessively featured in any writer’s canon as Jamaica Kincaid’s mother, Annie Drew. In this provocative new book, Daryl Dance argues that everything Kincaid has written, regardless of its apparent theme, actually relates to Kincaid’s efforts to free herself from her mother, whether her subject is ostensibly other family members, her home nation, a precolonial world, or even Kincaid herself.A devoted reader of Kincaid’s work, Dance had long been aware of the author’s love-hate relationship with her mother, but it was not until reading the 2008 essay "The Estrangement" that Dance began to ponder who this woman named Annie Victoria Richardson Drew really was. Dance decided to seek the answers herself, embarking on a years-long journey to unearth the real Annie Drew. Through interviews and extensive research, Dance has pieced together a fuller, more contextualized picture in an attempt to tell Annie Drew’s story. Previous analyses of Kincaid’s relationship with her mother have not gone beyond the writer’s own carefully orchestrated and sometimes contrived portraits of her. In Search of Annie Drew offers an alternate reading of Kincaid’s work that expands our understanding of the object of such passionate love and such ferocious hatred, an ordinary woman who became an unforgettable literary figure through her talented daughter’s renderings.

Jamaica Kincaid

Download Jamaica Kincaid PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 0786435801
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (864 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Jamaica Kincaid by : Mary Ellen Snodgrass

Download or read book Jamaica Kincaid written by Mary Ellen Snodgrass and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2008-07-09 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changing her name early in her career because her parents disapproved of her writing, Jamaica Kincaid crossed audiences to embrace feminist, American, postcolonial and world literature. This book offers an introduction and guided overview of her characters, plots, humor, symbols, and classic themes. Designed for students, fans, librarians, and teachers, the 84 A-to-Z entries combine commentary from interviewers, feminist historians, and book critics with numerous citations from primary and secondary sources and comparative literature. The companion features a chronology of Kincaid's life, West Indies heritage and works, and includes a character name chart.

Fear of Black Consciousness

Download Fear of Black Consciousness PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : Picador USA
ISBN 13 : 1250862914
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (58 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis Fear of Black Consciousness by : Lewis R. Gordon

Download or read book Fear of Black Consciousness written by Lewis R. Gordon and published by Picador USA. This book was released on 2023-01-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lewis R. Gordon’s Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking account of Black consciousness by a leading philosopher. Fear of Black Consciousness is an original and a bold intervention in the cultural and political conversation about systemic racism. Lewis R. Gordon, one of the leading scholars of Black existentialism and antiblackness, takes the reader on a journey through the historical development of racialized blackness, the problems racialization produces, and the many creative responses from black and nonblack communities in contemporary struggles for dignity and freedom. As he skillfully navigates the difficult and traumatic terrain, Gordon cuts through the mist of white narcissism and the versions of consciousness it perpetuates. He illuminates the different forms of invisibility that define black life, and he exposes the bad faith at the heart of many discussions about race and racism, not only in North America but also across the globe, including in countries where discussants regard themselves as “colorblind.” Gordon reveals that these lies about race and its supposed irrelevance confer upon many white people an inherited sense of being extraordinary. More than being privileged or entitled, they act with a license to do as they please. But for many if not most blacks, living an ordinary life in a white-dominated society is an extraordinary achievement. Informed by Gordon’s upbringing in Jamaica and the Bronx, and taking as touchstones the pandemic and the uprisings against police violence, Fear of Black Consciousness is a groundbreaking book that positions Black consciousness as a political commitment and creative practice, richly layered through art, love, and revolutionary action. It is sure to provoke, challenge, and inspire.

The Matter of Black Lives

Download The Matter of Black Lives PDF Online Free

Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 006301761X
Total Pages : 883 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (63 download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!


Book Synopsis The Matter of Black Lives by : Jelani Cobb

Download or read book The Matter of Black Lives written by Jelani Cobb and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 883 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of The New Yorker‘s groundbreaking writing on race in America—including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more—with a foreword by Jelani Cobb This anthology from the pages of the New Yorker provides a bold and complex portrait of Black life in America, told through stories of private triumphs and national tragedies, political vision and artistic inspiration. It reaches back across a century, with Rebecca West’s classic account of a 1947 lynching trial and James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” (which later formed the basis of The Fire Next Time), and yet it also explores our current moment, from the classroom to the prison cell and the upheavals of what Jelani Cobb calls “the American Spring.” Bringing together reporting, profiles, memoir, and criticism from writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elizabeth Alexander, Hilton Als, Vinson Cunningham, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Malcolm Gladwell, Jamaica Kincaid, Kelefa Sanneh, Doreen St. Félix, and others, the collection offers startling insights about this country’s relationship with race. The Matter of Black Lives reveals the weight of a singular history, and challenges us to envision the future anew.