Brown

James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "e;brown"e; in this powerful new collection.Divided into "e;Home Recordings"e; and "e;Field Recordings,"e; Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times. From "e;History"e;--a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "e;the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"e;--to "e;Money Road,"e; a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. These thirty-two taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "e;barkeep, activist, waiter"e; Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "e;De La Soul Is Dead,"e; about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("e;we were black then, not yet / African American"e;), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story. A testament to Young's own--and our collective--experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time.

James Brown. John Brown's raid. Brown v. the Topeka Board of Ed. The prize-winning author of Blue Laws meditates on all things "e;brown"e; in this powerful new collection.Divided into "e;Home Recordings"e; and "e;Field Recordings,"e; Brown speaks to the way personal experience is shaped by culture, while culture is forever affected by the personal, recalling a black Kansas boyhood to comment on our times. From "e;History"e;--a song of Kansas high-school fixture Mr. W., who gave his students "e;the Sixties / minus Malcolm X, or Watts, / barely a march on Washington"e;--to "e;Money Road,"e; a sobering pilgrimage to the site of Emmett Till's lynching, the poems engage place and the past and their intertwined power. These thirty-two taut poems and poetic sequences, including an oratorio based on Mississippi "e;barkeep, activist, waiter"e; Booker Wright that was performed at Carnegie Hall and the vibrant sonnet cycle "e;De La Soul Is Dead,"e; about the days when hip-hop was growing up ("e;we were black then, not yet / African American"e;), remind us that blackness and brownness tell an ongoing story. A testament to Young's own--and our collective--experience, Brown offers beautiful, sustained harmonies from a poet whose wisdom deepens with time.