Reckoning with Enslavement
Excerpt Georgetown, April 2017 It was early morning when I crossed the Francis Scott Key Bridge from Virginia into Georgetown. College spires loomed in the distance, gray in the dawn...
John Yoshida in Arkansas, 1943
In early 1943, John Yoshida escaped from the American concentration camp at Jerome, Arkansas.1This essay is adapted from John Howard, Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese Americans in the House...
Memphis by Hand: Creative Small-Business Advertising
Photo Essay Map of Memphis Neighborhoods (Base Map Data: US Census Bureau) Photographer's Statement While I didn't seek out hand-painted signs, I noticed their emergence as a pattern in my...
Burning bright, Tysons Corner, Virginia, 2009
A Mess of Poke
Essay If some of y’all never been down South too much, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about this, so that you’ll understand what I’m talking about Down there...
Black Lives at Arlington National Cemetery: From Slavery to Segregation
Essay The tours that I lead at Arlington National Cemetery begin here. We are standing in Section 27, a location in the northeastern corner of the cemetery bordered by the...
Naming Each Place
Readings Jericho Brown reads the poem "Like Father." Poem text Jericho Brown reads "Prayer of the Backhanded." Poem text Jericho Brown reads the poem "Scarecrow." Poem text Jericho Brown reads...
Petrochemical America, Petrochemical Addiction
Introduction by Emma Lirette Saltwater Intrusion, Chauvin, Louisiana, 2013. Photograph by Kurt Lirette. Courtesy of photographer. Growing up in Louisiana meant growing up with the men in my family intermittently...
The Poetics of Rescue and Resilience: A Conversation with Jericho Brown on The Selected Shepherd
Introduction: The Selected Shepherd: A “Fair, Just Place” Let us live beyond the here and now by nurturing each other and supporting one another’s works.—Assotto Saint, “Why I Write”1Assotto Saint,...
Stormy Banks and Sweet Rivers: A Sacred Harp Geography
Introduction On a warm Saturday in early summer, a crowd gathers at a white-washed church in rural Alabama. As they begin to sing, a sound rises that is overwhelming in...