The Read Out June Selection

The Prophets is a beautiful, painful, moving, and breathtaking emersion into a past that just hasn't been written yet. It happened but it is not yet built into our imaginations. The limitations of the US imaginary continue to astound me, in my own life, in my teaching, and across all of my work. What we can know, and see, and think into existence is foreclosed by the historical and social imaginary we have been so deeply steeped in. The Prophets shatters the boundaries of the restrictive landscape we've been offered from which to see and imagine love, liberation, and joy in the painful history of struggle in America.

 

I am perhaps most fond of Kiese Laymon's review comment, which has kept me thinking and smiling as I've read this book: "I'm convinced Morrison, Baldwin, and Bambara sat around sipping wine one night, talking about the day we'd read an offering like The Prophets."

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Yes.

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Hope is a discipline. One we must engage every day. I am grateful to Robert Jones, Jr. for this offering and its contribution to my practice.