Blue front
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- Synopsis
-
A stunning account of racism, mob violence, and cultural responsibility as rendered by the poet Martha Collins the victim hanged, though not on a tree, this was not the country, they used a steel arch with electric lights, and later a lamppost, this was a modern event, the trees were not involved. --from "Blue Front"
Martha Collins's father, as a five-year-old, sold fruit outside the Blue Front Restaurant in Cairo, Illinois, in 1909. What he witnessed there, with 10,000 participants, is shocking.
In Blue Front, Collins describes the brutal lynching of a black man and, as an afterthought, a white man, both of them left to the mercilessness of the spectators.
The poems patch together an arresting array of evidence--newspaper articles, census data, legal history, postcards, photographs, and Collins's speculations about her father's own experience.
The resulting work, part lyric and part narrative, is a bold investigation into hate, mob mentality, culpability, and what it means to be white in a country still haunted by its violently racist history.
- Copyright:
- 2006
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 86 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9781555974497
- Publisher:
- Graywolf Press
- Date of Addition:
- 05/27/15
- Copyrighted By:
- Martha Collins
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Poetry, Literature and Fiction
- Submitted By:
- Daproim Africa
- Proofread By:
- Daproim Africa
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.