Editor's Note
Black History Month began in February 1926 when historian Carter G. Woodson launched a movement to promote knowledge of Black history and achievement. What started as a one-week observance has become a month each year devoted to exploring and raising awareness of Black history. As the tradition reaches its 100th anniversary, Jarvis R. Givens surveys its origins and meaning in I’ll Make Me a World, reviewed at Chapter 16 this week by Jane Marcellus, who writes, “In both I’ll Make Me a World and one of his previous books, American Grammar: Race, Education, and the Building of a Nation, [Givens] privileges those who are not famous, pursuing ‘deeper knowledge of human complexity’ found in ‘lesser known scenes in history.’”
Speaking of lesser known stories, Aram Goudsouzian interviews Joy-Ann Reid this week about her book Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America, winner of the Hooks National Book Award. “I think of Medgar as a sort of ‘Forrest Gump’ of civil rights history,” Reid says. “He is present and embedded in so many of the key events in history, yet his name has been scrubbed from our official memory.”
We round out this week’s trio of pieces with a review of The Witch’s Orchard, the debut novel by Appalachian writer Archer Sullivan. Reviewer Faye Jones describes the book as “both an excellent mystery and a study of how a small, isolated community endures a series of soul-shaking events.”
News Roundup
- An essay by Ishmael Reed appeared in The Nation.
- Essays by Kory Wells were published in Flyway Journal of Writing & Environment and The Plentitudes.
- Hadley Hury was interviewed for River City Lifestyle.
- Christian J. Collier is the featured author for this year’s Writers@Work, April 7-9.
- Adam Ross’ Playworld is a finalist for the Gotham Book Prize.
