To the Realization of Perfect Helplessness

"Twenty-five years ago, after her grandmother's death, Robin Coste Lewis discovered a ... collection of photographs under her bed. The poetry that she marries to these vivid daily images of 20th-century Black joy and survival ('I am trying / to make the gods / happy, '; 'I am trying / to make the dead / clap and shout') stands forth as an alternative to the usual way we frame the story of 'race' and 'the great migration'--as she puts it, 'all those other clever ways we've created not to talk about Black culture.' Communing with the engaging photographic vernacular of her particular family, to be revealed on black pages with white type, Lewis quite literally reverses all expectations"--