Editor's Note
Today at Chapter 16, Sara Beth West reviews Happy Land, the latest novel by Dolen Perkins-Valdez, inspired by the Kingdom of the Happy Land, a real 19th-century community founded by formerly enslaved people on the border of North and South Carolina. Perkins-Valdez describes her vision of Happy Land as “both a literal and metaphorical manifestation of a people’s desire to rise into their full humanity.”
Tennessee, we should note, is also home to an intentional settlement of freed men and women, the Promise Land Community in Dickson County. Promise Land is featured in Aaron Robertson’s 2024 book The Black Utopians, and it’s the subject of the forthcoming From the Fiery Furnace to the Promise Land (Vanderbilt University Press) by Serina Gilbert, who will be the TN Writers | TN Stories featured author on September 13.
Last week at the site, we revisited Erica Wright’s review of Major Jackson’s Razzle Dazzle: New and Selected Poems, 2002-2020; Tina Chambers reviewed Inside the Park, a new middle-grade novel from Andrea Williams; Bradley Sides reviewed Chris Offutt’s latest Mick Hardin mystery, The Reluctant Sheriff; and Kim Green considered Black in Blues, a meditation on the many meanings of the color blue in African American culture by Imani Perry.
News Roundup
- Ishmael Reed wrote about his decision to be a “global author” in Alta Journal.
- Dolen Perkins-Valdez talked with Psychology Today and Amsterdam News.
- Alice Randall was interviewed on the Broken Record podcast.
- Clay Risen wrote about political deportation in the McCarthy Era for The Bulwark.
- Ann Patchett discussed her career as a writer and a bookseller with the BBC.
