Ward built this anthology as a direct answer to Baldwin's The Fire Next Time (load #84 of this same list), gathering eighteen essays and poems — ten of them written for the volume — from her generation's leading writers, among them Carol Anderson, Jericho Brown, Edwidge Danticat, Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, Kiese Laymon, Claudia Rankine, Clint Smith, Natasha Trethewey, and Kevin Young. Arranged in three movements — the legacy, the reckoning, and the leap — the pieces run from Phillis Wheatley's husband to hip-hop, from Emmett Till's open casket to a husband's letter to his unborn child. The book is dedicated to Trayvon Martin and the many others denied justice, and became a New York Times bestseller.
Author: edited by Jesmyn Ward · Original publisher: Scribner (New York), 2016
