Review by Booklist Review
The nonfiction debut of acclaimed poet Reeves (Best Barbarian, 2022) opens with a description of a 2008 photo of a young Black boy attending an election rally for President Obama. Reeves describes the boy as he "stands on the precipice of a complex, momentous, and sublime moment of history," draws parallels to the pandemic- and protest-filled summer of 2020, and invites us into this reflective and absorbing collection of essays. Intermixing memoir, history, close reading, and social commentary, Reeves ruminates on and analyzes topics including gentrification and the art, music, and literature of iconic Black creatives. In "Through the Smoke, Through the Veil, Through the Wind," Reeves meditates on his experience performing a poetry reading at a former plantation, the indescribable tragedy of the lives that were lived on the site, and the resilience of the community that was born from those terrible circumstances. In such essays, Reeves uses a personal lens to access the overwhelming expansiveness of history. Reeves' prose is lyrical, poetic, and engrossing, and sure to appeal to fans of Hanif Abdurraqib and Michael Eric Dyson.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Poet Reeves (Best Barbarian) interweaves autobiography and American history in his strong nonfiction debut. The elliptical opener, "Our Angel of History," describes a photograph of a Black boy watching a Barack Obama rally in 2008 and uses the boy's "stoic" expression as a metaphor for the necessity of having a clear-eyed understanding of the ensuing decade's racial strife. In "Reading Fire, Reading the Stars," Reeves suggests that interpreting "texts," broadly, has been an integral part of Black American life, citing both runaway enslaved people who "read" the stars as they made their way north and his own childhood Bible study, which gave him the interpretive tools to become a cultural critic. One of the most poignant selections is "Letters to Michael Brown," in which Reeves addresses a series of dispatches to the slain teenager--who was killed by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in 2014--explaining that Reeves's seven-year-old child "fears being shot when she hears sirens." Other entries touch on hush harbors (clandestine church services enslaved people held in the woods), the death of actor Michael K. Williams, and the fiction of Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright. Reeves's trademark lyricism ("The pit of the peach swaddled by its flesh, becoming whole there on the limb of the day") shines throughout, proving that he's just as affecting in prose as in verse. This impresses. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Through these essays, poet Reeves (King Me; Best Barbarian) extends passion and profound vulnerability surrounding his experiences as a Black man and father. He examines the world through touching moments of love and clarity between a father and daughter facing the uncertainty and terror of war. He revisits the segregation of the past and how history teaches segregation as a long-ago reality, even though it was still happening as recently as 30 years ago. These essays also ask readers to question how peace is experienced: is peace only obtainable on a massive scale, or can it be discovered in the pleasure of reading, in joyful songs of praise, or even in absolute silence? VERDICT Readers interested in Black history, community traditions, self-awareness, and the works of Toni Morrison will enjoy Reeves's first essay collection, as will those searching for a unique voice to help make sense of today's chaotic world.--Shannon Meyer
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
The acclaimed poet plunges into prose with dense literary and cultural criticism accented by personal reflection. In his nonfiction debut, Reeves, the Whiting Award--winning author of the poetry collections King Me and Best Barbarian, rigorously analyzes works by Black cultural paragons, from Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison to Outkast and Michael K. Williams. The author balances this commentary with his own experiences as a Black man in America, including his childhood in the Pentecostal Church and conversations with his young daughter following the killing of George Floyd. "I gropingly understood that her ability to see into people's questions, to find the question below the question was not only a gift of discernment," he writes, "but necessary in the struggle for Black folks' freedom in the United States--seeing what was obscuring freedom and its articulation and getting underneath it, unshackling freedom from fear." Each essay probes this concept of "underneath," and each paragraph is packed both emotionally and intellectually, requiring close, conscientious reading to fully grasp the author's examination of the abundance of irony and contradiction in Black experience. Reeves' call to resist the salacious and decenter the self is stringent, and nothing is immune from his piercing pen--not even such heralded projects as Hamilton or The 1619 Project. Reeves acknowledges where his critiques may meet opposition, particularly in this "loquacious" age, but he insists on a more honest understanding of history, the complications and complicities on which protests are built, and the method by which tragedy and death become the property of the public imagination. The author's lyrical prose reflects frenzy and desperation, imbuing a new literary canon with urgency and relevance that is both personal and political. For Reeves, "feeling for the future is a matter of art." With this text, he inclines toward his ideal of the ecstatic, defiantly daring to build the sort of life--intellectual and free--so easily denied to Black Americans. A cerebral, ruminative essay collection brimming with insight and vision. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
