Black in the Middle: An Anthology of the Black Midwest

Williamson (Scandalized My Name), director of the Black Midwest Initiative, presents a timely and evocative anthology of essays, poetry, photographs, and interviews in order “to make visible the struggle and the agony, yes, but also the diversity and richness of black Midwestern life.” Common themes include the impact of the Great Migration on the Midwest, and the burdens and achievements of Black women. Jeffrey Wray, a film studies professor at Michigan State, writes movingly of his mother’s pursuit of higher education after her husband’s murder in 1968. Vanessa Taylor, editor-in-chief of The Drinking Gourd, describes how she embraced the power of “Black women’s rage” during protests against the 2015 killing of Jamal Clark by Minneapolis police. Essayist Lyndsey Ellis offers an intensely personal account of embracing natural hair in college; filmmaker David Weathersby details the “mass of Afro-eroticism and liberation” he saw at a clandestine house music party in Chicago; and law professor Brian G. Gilmore links Philando Castile, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dred Scott, and Lester Young in his poem “the negro in minneapolis (for prince & philando castile).” By calling forth the full range of the Black Midwestern experience, this bracing anthology offers crucial insights into why the region is the epicenter of current protests against police brutality and racial injustice. (Sept.)