Family. Memory. Legacy. These words, these themes, build upon each other. Within our families there are shared moments, sometimes of joy, sometimes of pain, that help write our stories. These stories, passed down as lore, or as photographs, become memories. And with time, as memories stretch and years pass, legacy is created. In her latest book, 

To Free the Captives: A Plea for the American Soul

(Knopf), the former U.S. poet laureate Tracy K. Smith examines the deepest of American wounds through her own family. This searing memoir travels through time, relationships, and Smith’s own life to illuminate the lasting legacy of racism in our country.

Smith is the acclaimed author of five poetry collections, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for 

. (It’s worth mentioning here that, from 2018 to 2020, she was the host of the poetry podcast 

, which has no relation to the media company publishing this article, though both, by coincidence, were launched around the same time.) She has tapped into her family’s history in her previous works, notably in 

, which pays homage to her father’s life and work as an engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope, and in her first memoir, 

, a book about her childhood, her close relationship with her mother, and her mother’s illness and death. It is profound and touching to see Smith so sensitively explore her connections to her mother and father within her work, and to connect her relationships with them to how she moves about the world.

 arose out of the grief Smith felt in the wake of the events of 2020: witnessing attacks on Black life and experiencing a nation undergoing a collective reckoning about racism. Smith writes that she weathered the pandemic in the safety of her New Jersey home, but calls that sense of safety false, knowing, and having witnessed, that at any moment, life could be taken from her. Watching Black death and the reactions to it—and even, at times, justifications for it—weighed on her.

 with her grandfather on her father’s side, placing us in Sunflower, Alabama. After returning home from serving his country in World War I, he is still treated as a second-class citizen, denied securities and opportunities promised to servicemen—much like how the promises of Reconstruction failed to materialize after the Civil War, paving the way for decades of inequality and a constant fight to reclaim what was owed. Despite these failures, or maybe in the face of them, her family’s strength endured. This theme of resilience—the idea of surviving in the face of struggle—loops throughout the book.

Shying away from narrative, but managing to keep an eye on the stops along her journey, Smith manages to thread lyrics and anecdotes into her work as she critiques history, lives through current events, and reflects on how we can move forward. In 

a recent WNYC interview with Brian Lehrer

, Smith comments that “one of the big concepts that the book seeks to explore is the nature of freedom as it exists in the American imagination.” She goes on to explain that she’s come to see freedom, through the eyes of our culture, as something “belonging differently to different people. People that I describe in the book as free are those who appear to descend from histories of power or ownership.” The freed, the captives, therefore appear to be less deserving of freedom than those who were always free and had the power to make these classifications.

The work of what she terms the “American imagination” is clearly visualized in two encounters within the book. The first is when Smith pays a visit to “the oldest plantation in Georgia remaining with its original family” while working on an opera libretto. She has trouble reckoning with how the plantation is described as “remaining with its original family,” her mind instantly considering the enslaved people who also lived and worked there. This conflicted feeling only grows stronger as Smith and other guests share a meal. “It is a labor to keep my thoughts from where they wish to go,” she writes. Later, in her bedchambers, Smith has an imagined conversation with a young Black woman—a ghost?—and finally voices her feelings. That the family can skim over the violent history of their land (land that was stolen, as Smith notes) shows her that they have not considered what it meant to live a life in the shadows of their great home, to be the backbone upon which it was built and survived.

The second encounter is Smith’s meditation on her first marriage, to an artist named Diego, whom she met in Mexico. In their neighborhood back in the States, she describes how he was stiff around their Black neighbors and other members of their community. He commented that he didn’t consider his wife to be “one of them”—in his American imagination, Smith was beyond racial stereotype and discrimination, solely because he had taken the time to know and love her. And yet, he did not extend that thinking to other Black Americans because it allowed him to be above them. I appreciate Smith’s vulnerability in sharing these reflections. In doing so, she  demonstrates how we can be complicit in our ignorance.

To use one’s own family and one’s own life experience as a way to map the legacy of slavery and racism in this country is beyond powerful—it’s an act of reclamation. To know that there are stories among uncles and cousins, the lives of our grandparents, and the ones who came before us, and to think of how they shape the lives we lead brings Smith’s work home. As noted by the subtitle, the work is indeed “a plea for the American soul,” a personal understanding of what the past can teach us and how we learn from it, if we choose to. As Smith writes, “The scale of Black hope has never been content with a single person’s freedom, or even a single people’s freedom. Rather it is grounded in the wisdom that genuine freedom brings with it the transformation—the true liberation—of all humankind.”

A Liberating, Time-Traveling Journey Through Family, History, and Memory

I find essay collections captivating because they offer the opportunity to dive in at any point. Of course, reading them in chronological order is the typical method, but sometimes a topic or a theme calls out to you. In reading 

Open Questions: Thirty Years of Writing About Art

by Helen Molesworth, the first-ever collection of her art writing, I did in fact start from the beginning.

To backtrack slightly, Molesworth is a Los Angeles–based writer, curator, and host of 

, a podcast produced by David Zwirner gallery. From 2014 to 2018, she was the chief curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) in Los Angeles and, prior to that, from 2010 to 2014, the chief curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. Many were shocked when Molesworth was suddenly let go from her position at MOCA, coming off the heels of the highly successful 2017 Kerry James Marshall retrospective, “

,” which was co-organized with curators from the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. MOCA initially said that Molesworth had stepped down of her own accord, but it was later revealed that she had been let go, possibly due to not seeing eye to eye with the museum’s former director Philippe Vergne.

Molesworth came to art as an outsider, sneaking out of class in high school to visit the Met, and notes in the introduction that “it never occurred to me that I might one day live in this world: the world of museums and galleries.” She was curious about art, and about its complexities: “An artwork is a network of ideas, feelings, form, history,” she writes, and her desire to understand art leads her to write about it, to “undo” this network.

This offering as to why she writes about art feels like a natural way to introduce readers to the 24 essays that follow, exploring the works of a variety of artists, including Lisa Yuskavage, Simone Leigh, Ruth Asawa, Noah Davis, and Marcel Duchamp—who receives his own section, as Molesworth wrote her dissertation about him—along with her insights and thought process in viewing them. Her essay on the paintings of Dike Blair opens with a memory of a dive bar in Ithaca, New York, that she frequented while getting her Ph.D. from Cornell. This idea that art allows the viewer to time travel is yet another key element of her introduction.

,” Molesworth focuses on a photograph by the artist that was exhibited as part of a solo show at the gallery Sikkema Jenkins & Co. As she had long been familiar with Lawson’s work, Molesworth is still surprised by her reaction to the photo. While the image appears candid, Molesworth notes that it’s stage-directed: One of the subjects, a Black man, wears a strange mouth guard that Lawson brought to the shoot. Appearing in the upper right-hand corner of the photo is another photo, that of a set of George Washington’s dentures. Molesworth’s writing takes us out of the gallery and into her own account of learning how Washington purchased teeth, possibly those of enslaved people, for his dentures. Then she opens up many questions about this information—and about the history of America and the lore around Washington—turning them around in her mind and on the page for readers to follow.

The act of viewing art is never the end point for Molesworth—it’s always the beginning of the experience. Her essays are a continuation, a follow-up after the fact, that offer a new way of seeing. A handful of texts in 

 are paired with newly written postscripts in which Molesworth reflects on the preceding essay and provides context on her thoughts. Many of these postscripts appear in the section “On Why I Love Artists,” which features essays each focusing on one artist, some of which were commissioned to appear in exhibition catalogues for one-person shows. I appreciated these updates, and the fact that Molesworth used this space to look back on her work, and at times her personal history. Her postscripts are another way of continuing the conversation.

 thinking about the way I view art, and about the spaces in which art is shown. Sometimes information is provided to the audience in the form of wall text or a catalogue, but another part is played by the individual and their personal experience. Molesworth doesn’t aim to lecture her reader, but instead engages them and points to the things that “pleased, confused, bothered, disturbed, or confounded” her. She states in the book that she hopes her essays help viewers to be curious in front of works of art, and that—borrowing a phrase from Duchamp—“a work of art is completed by the viewer.” 

 is more than a collection of art writing; it is a meditation on seeing and feeling, on connecting and thought-making. Molesworth gives that power to the viewer, and in a way, gives them the chance to be the curator themselves.

With “Open Questions,” Helen Molesworth Opens Up New Ways of Seeing Art

Until February 4, 2024, the Brooklyn Museum will have an (unofficial) new name: the 

 Museum. As of last weekend, the fifth floor is hosting “

,” an immersive exhibition featuring more than 450 objects—ranging from artwork, sports jerseys, and film posters to photographs and musical instruments—from the award-winning filmmaker’s personal collection.

Organized by Kimberli Gant, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art, along with curatorial assistant Indira A. Abiskaroon, the exhibition celebrates Lee’s long association and connection with Brooklyn through various points of inspiration. Within seven thematic sections—“Black History and Culture,” “Family,” “Brooklyn,” “Photography,” “Cinema History,” “Music,” and “Sports”—museum visitors are taken on a dynamic journey through Lee’s creative process.

“Spike has been in Brooklyn almost all his life,” Gant says. “So many of his films take place here; he coined the term ‘Da People’s Republic of Brooklyn.’ If the Brooklyn Museum is supposed to represent the art and culture of this borough and present it to the world, how could we 

 present such an important storyteller to audiences?”

When asked about the genesis of the show, Gant says that the exhibition demonstrates how you get from A to Z, not in the sense of ‘this is the process of making a film,’ but ‘this is the process of how Lee gets inspired and fueled.’”

Selected clips of Lee’s 24 films, made over a span of 37 years, are woven throughout. “We didn’t want to do a traditional film exhibition,” Gant says. Instead, the selected clips serve to echo the thematic sections. “I watched a 

 of Spike Lee films over the past year and a half, trying to find incredible moments in different films and documentaries that would augment the objects.”

Lee refers to the blend of ingredients that he puts into his films as “a Spike Lee joint,”  and “Creative Sources”

can be viewed as a physical and visual representation of those ingredients. The journey begins in “Black History and Culture” with a clip from one of his most famous films, 

 (1991). Posters of Angela Davis share space with a framed African National Congress flag signed by Nelson and Winnie Mandela, along with a “Colored Waiting Room” sign. These objects speak to the rich, complex nature of Black history, which Lee also reflects in films like 

 (2000), a dark comedy about a modern-day minstrel show.

Gant knew from the start that she wanted to include a “Family” section in the show, noting that “so many of the familiar relationships in his films are complex but loving and joyful.” Here, artwork by Lee’s children is displayed next to looped scenes from 

 (1990), while a tribute portrait of Lee’s father, 

, a jazz musician who wrote the scores for many of his son’s films, watches over the gallery. “Family” segues into “Brooklyn,” which showcases the role the borough plays in films 

The “Photography” section is almost a “mini U.S. photo history retrospective,” says Gant, with works by James Van Der Zee, Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, and Gordon Parks. The wall text for the section notes that photography makes up one of the largest parts of Lee’s collection. Lee’s influences and achievements are also on display in the “Cinema History'' gallery, including his handwritten speech for winning the 2019 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for 

 (2018). A guitar owned by Prince and records from Stevie Wonder appear in the “Music” section, which pays tribute to the most  important artists and scores featured in Lee’s films.

As the director is known for being a lifelong New York Knicks fan, the exhibition wouldn’t be complete without a display of jerseys, tickets, and newspapers depicting his courtside behavior. Pendants from the Brooklyn Dodgers, a photograph of the 

, and signed memorabilia from sports world luminaries help to round out the “Sports” section.

The exhibition finishes with three film clips featuring dancing scenes pulled from Lee’s films, an ode to the fact that, even though his films often tackle heavy subject matter, he always makes room for celebration and allows his characters to find moments of joy. It feels fitting, then, that “Spike Lee: Creative Sources” is itself a celebration of the borough, its stories, and the storyteller who brings them both to life.

Spike Lee’s Prolific Career Gets the Spotlight, Naturally, in Brooklyn

“I have collected lines (and they have collected me).”

Taking notes, both longhand and digital, is a long-standing habit of mine. My never-ending to-do list stretches across sticky notes, the backs of envelopes, and several apps on my phone. I take notes when visiting art exhibitions, when I need to capture ideas for poems, or to keep track of songs to sing at karaoke. Throughout my school years, I took notes in various subjects to help clarify lessons: mnemonics for science and math, important dates from American and world history, feedback from my classmates during creative writing workshops.

Note-taking is a form of research and a way of cataloging thoughts, ideas, and lived moments. We take notes in order to remember, to return to important information, or simply to mark the fact that something exists—or once did. I’m curious if these intentions are why Christina Sharpe, a professor of English literature and Black studies at York University in Toronto, set out to write her latest book, 

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux)—and if she began with a jotted-down line, a thought or a recollection, and continued her collection until a thread could be woven between her words.

“Note 102” from the book, whose opening line begins this review, is itself a collection of lines from novels and poems, some relating to one another and some with meanings that lie solely with Sharpe.

Through 248 notes spanning 392 pages, Sharpe weaves together thoughts on Black life and the lived Black experience. In some entries, she reaches into the past, both public and personal; with other notes, we become bystanders to events in Sharpe’s life in real time. She begins a trail of thought on one page, then shifts to a new note, only to pick up the original thought several notes later. Across this note-taking opus, Sharpe explores acts of racial violence, the process of viewing art, family memories both tender and vicious, and observations on literature, politics, music, grief, and joy.

 with the journalist Jenna Worthman, Sharpe says that the idea for 

, in which the character Hi Man signals the beginning and end of days spent in a prison in Georgia by calling out to his fellow prisoners. Hi Man’s voice marks the end of the sexual assault that takes place throughout the night and the beginning of the physical labor that the prisoners must endure during the day. This “note”—Hi Man’s calls—launched Sharpe’s investigation that the following notes document.

Monstrous Intimacies: Making Post-Slavery Subjects

 (2010), has become widely known for her work that examines the intricacies of Black life, past and present, through a lens that seeks to investigate how the institution of slavery and its wake continue to haunt Black individuals and communities. And yet, despite this haunting, there are moments of celebration and beauty and wonder and joy. In a way, 

, giving it a new shape. Pulling from personal interactions and historical examples, Sharpe’s notes are a catalog of intersecting reflections bound together to form a new whole.

“Note 94: Encounter” opens with “What we must prepare for every single time we leave the house,” and then incorporates a section of Dionne Brand’s (who is also Sharpe’s partner) long poem “

,” making note of the everyday terror that might await Black bodies outside their homes. This terror, as well as thoughts on violence, opens the book, but only as an entry point to unfolding other memories and observations.

I noticed the importance of photography and image-making throughout the book. “In my memory there are two photographs,” “Note 5” begins, as Sharpe takes us through childhood recollections of seeing a photograph of a white boy shouting in rage, “angry about Black people,” and an image of Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock Nine, surrounded by a screaming mob, yet still composed. She goes on to discuss famous images of lynchings in “Note 27” and her refusal to research them while writing this book, and then turns to softer family portaits and candids. While “Note 169” does not discuss photography outright, it features an interview with author Gayl Jones that ends with the quote, “Perhaps brutality enables one to recognize what tenderness is.” Tenderness, to Sharpe, is snapshots of nature, or a Black body allowed to rest and simply exist.

Another recurring theme is the idea of the memorial—whom it’s for and what purpose it serves. Sharpe describes an uncomfortable encounter with a white woman who approached her at the National Memorial for Justice and Peace in Montgomery, Alabama, then later offers up a critique of “Amazing Grace” and a desire to see it not as a song that redeems slavery but as one about the actions of John Newton, the white man who wrote it.

The spirit of Sharpe’s mother, Ida Wright Sharpe, also moves throughout this collection. “Note 145”—which might be my favorite in the book—recounts how her mother would wake her by singing “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” by Stevie Wonder over the course of one summer. The note led me to remember similar moments in my own life, particularly acts of love and kindness from my grandparents, who taught me how to cherish the multitudes of Blackness.

 to date has frequently mentioned its fragmentation and duality of acting as a memoir and an exploration of Black life, a work that bears witness to both beauty and pain. On one page, readers encounter suffering, and on the next, warmth and humanity. “Note 207” contains an image of Sharpe’s “well-loved, well-read” copy of 

, perhaps the first note that created this chain. By the end of reading 

, my copy mirrored this image: flagged pages marking the lines I wanted to share here—yet another form of note-taking.

In “Ordinary Notes,” Christina Sharpe Weaves a Profound Portrait of Black Life

What’s the purpose of a museum—and who decides which objects are worthy of value, attention, and care? These two questions, along with decades of inventive and collective artmaking, are at the core of “

” at the New Museum, the Chicago-based artist Theaster Gates’s first-ever museum survey exhibition to be staged in New York City (on view through February 5, 2023).

Also an urbanist and social activist who flows between making, preserving, and collecting, Gates operates a multifarious, cross-disciplinary practice, moving from archiving and caring for historical collections of images and objects to physical object-making, whether it be ceramics, painting, installation, or sculpture. Some of his works even verge on architecture. In developing the exhibition, New Museum curators Massimiliano Gioni and Gary Carrion-Murayari wanted to explore the intersectionality of Gates’s vast body of work, elevating his singular vision while also considering how, more generally, we think about and use objects in our everyday lives. “We were excited to look at Theaster as an artist and an object maker,” says Gioni. “There are many occasions in the exhibition when we look at his work as a cultural preservationist and a kind of cultural interpreter.”

From his studio in West Side Chicago, Gates has become globally revered and well-known for safeguarding and repurposing buildings in the city’s historically Black neighborhoods—many of which have been left to the elements, their histories decayed and forgotten. Perhaps his most transformational project is the Stony Island Arts Bank, which Gates overhauled from a crumbling, abandoned structure into a robust cultural center that houses community events and archival collections that speak to the history of the city itself.

“Young Lords and Their Traces” stems from a recent period of loss in Gates’s life, following the passing of several important figures, including the curator Okwui Enwezor, who originally conceived of the New Museum exhibition “

Grief and Grievance: Art and Mourning in America

; and Gates’s father, Theaster Gates Sr., who worked as a roofer. “In the introduction to [the exhibition catalog], Theaster talks about these losses intersecting with the show, and in a sense leading to the exhibition a somber atmosphere and a reflection on mourning,” says Gioni when asked about the roots of the exhibition. In reflecting on the process of mourning and grief, Gates began to think about the connection between objects and people, and how collections are used as a way to remember people and to honor their legacy. Memory can exist within artifacts and everyday objects that take on new meanings once a person connected to them is no longer alive. In this way, objects, collections, and even the buildings that Gates preserves function as sites of memorialization.

The thematic structure of the exhibition, which covers the museum’s second, third, and fourth floors, weaves in and out, connected by pieces made by Gates as well as his extensive archival collections—but it remains grounded in material. The second floor, displaying ceramic works, puts forward the idea of what is deemed worthy of remembrance, and how museums play a role in that decision-making. For Gates, clay is both a tool of preservation and also a material that records the process of self-discovery. “He’s interested in the way in which ceramics, both within African American culture and Japanese culture, represent a way of knowledge that is embodied in the physical presence and physical materials,” Gioni says. The second floor also puts on view the archive of the late 

, a University of Chicago professor of Soviet cinema and friend of Gates’s who died of cancer in 2020.

The third floor can be viewed as an ode to roofing paper: Gates’s tar paper paintings on display, originally conceived for 

, are emblematic of his practice of reusing and highlighting discarded materials. It’s important to note Gates’s personal connection with tar, as his father used the material as a roofer. These paintings, too, serve as yet another form of remembrance. Along with displaying further collections of ephemera, this section of the exhibition further explores the idea of museums as sites of knowledge, remembrance, and even, at times, erasure.

On the fourth floor, there’s a space for communion, dedicated to how churches—especially Black churches—function both as spaces for sacred experience and community outreach. Containing artworks made from the floor of the former New York Armory, the space will be activated throughout the exhibition by 

Moving from the tangible—paper, clay, wood—to the ephemeral sense of loss and remembrance that can be assigned to or embedded within these materials, “Young Lords and Their Traces” journeys through deeply personal terrain, showcasing Gates’s exceptionally varied practice and reflecting on what a museum stands for. As viewers move through the galleries, the underlying hierarchies and values behind Gates’s impressive body of work come into focus. Reflections on who decides what and who should be remembered emerge.

Theaster Gates’s New Exhibition Poetically Prods the Meaning of a Museum

“African Americans have played a major role in creating the foundation for what we know as American food,” food anthropologist and writer 

, the podcast she hosts. “From soul food to barbecue and almost everything in between, African American cuisine has essentially changed the palate of America.” It’s a subject fitting for Freeman, whose work explores the intersection of race, culture, and food. Curious and perceptive, she skillfully interviews chefs, food historians, and other culinary experts, illuminating how Black Americans have been—and still are—integral to shaping the food and drinks we consume.

 magazine’s radio arm, the show weaves Freeman’s personal memories with the history of Black foodways, creating an engaging tapestry of stories. The details of each episode’s theme can conjure up a range of emotions: 

, focused on the Great Migration, details how Black Americans moved from the South and settled in cities in the North and West—and brought their food culture with them. Freeman explains how Southern staples such as fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, and macaroni and cheese spread across the country, helping to build Black communities along the way.

, Freeman unpacks the complicated relationships between Black Americans and agriculture. Going back to the failed promises of Reconstruction, when newly freed Black Americans were meant to recieve access to resources (such as land) to help them succeed outside of enslavement, she outlines how sharecropping, discriminatory federal policies, and racist financial lending practices led to a steep 

. Later, Freeman turns her focus to the present, juxtaposing this painful history with 

 between voices from today’s re-emerging Black farming community, including Ashlee Johnson-Geisse, a Black queer farmer who started Brown Girl Farms during the height of the pandemic.

 delve into Black brewing and distilling, and the often overlooked contributions of Black Americans to the practice. One guest, Victoria Eady Butler of Uncle Nearest ​​Premium Whiskey—named after Nathan “Nearest” Green, who is believed to have taught Jack Daniel the craft of distilling—proudly follows in her great-great-grandfather’s footsteps. “We truly are our ancestor’s wildest dream,” she says. Freeman also investigates early pitmasters and barbecue traditions in 

 about the challenge of innovating in soul food while staying true to family recipes; and 

 the Civil Rights and Black Power movements to Black cuisine by telling the stories of Aylene Quin, who fed those taking part in Mississippi’s boycotts, and Cleo Silvers, who participated in the Black Panther Party’s Free Breakfast for Children program. (While Setting the Table’s first season recently wrapped, a second season is in the works, slated for mid-2023, with topics including Gullah-Geechee cuisine, Black mixologists and bartenders from the past and present, and the historic Philadelphia caterers during Reconstruction.)

Throughout the program, Freeman makes its premise resoundingly clear: Black Americans have never stopped carrying their culinary legacies forward. To the delight of the country’s taste buds, their descendants continue this tradition by creating, and taking up space in, the next chapter of food history.

A Podcast That Illuminates Black Americans’ Influence on U.S. Cuisine

How do the generation of Black Americans who grew up in the past 25 years reckon with the tragedies that play out in their daily lives? And how do these forces shape them and their worldviews? In her new book, 

 (Grand Central Publishing), poet, educator, and scholar 

—who currently serves as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the United States (and who was the guest on 

)—explores these questions, and others, by meditating on race, class, trauma, justice, and memory, and their influences on contemporary creativity. At this vital point in time and American culture, Alexander—a Black woman, mother, auntie, and lifelong teacher—positions art in her writing as a powerful means for understanding and self-expression, and for radically illuminating the country’s racism and racial violence.

Organized into three parts, with multiple essays in each, the book reveals how Alexander thinks about the contemporary lives of young Black Americans, and about the history of violence and grief knitted into the tapestry of the Black American experience. Interwoven with her writing are explications on pieces of music that speak to this cultural moment and act as protest songs—including Flying Lotus’s 

 (2015)—as well as works from a range of artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Kerry James Marshall, Amy Sherald, and Kara Walker. These images act as visual beacons to Alexander’s prose, not illustrating her words, but illuminating them. Part I, for example, begins with a detail of Lorna Simpson’s “Thin Bands” (2019), a desolate black-and-blue abstract screenprint whose tenor runs through the book’s assertive beginning.

Part II, the book’s title chapter, originally appeared as 

 in the midst of the civil unrest in June 2020 following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. (The piece later received a National Magazine Award.) In it, Alexander calls the young people who grew up in the past 25 years “the Trayvon Generation”—a reference to 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s untimely death, in 2012, and the ensuing cultural moment that ignited a movement and ushered in a wave of activism against police brutality. It’s an age group, she writes, marked by the very public deaths of Black Americans, and also the weight of history that came before them. Alexander’s two teenage sons are part of this generation, and in this piece she writes to them, for them, and about them. Its opening paragraph—preceded by “Martina and Rhonda” (1993), a series of large-format Polaroids of two young Black women, taken by photographer Dawoud Bey, that nods toward the vulnerability of Black youth—offers a gut-wrenching review of those we have witnessed murdered: “This one was shot in his grandmother’s yard. This one was carrying a bag of Skittles. This one was playing with a toy gun in front of a gazebo. Black girl in bright bikini. Black boy holding cell phone. This one danced like a marionette as he was shot down in a Chicago intersection.”

Alexander describes the fear of keeping Black boys grounded and alive at a time when witnessing Black death is just a click away on our smartphones (and appears, over and over again, via videos that are often seen out of context), and when Black life is constantly threatened by forces outside of her control—in one incident she describes, her community’s block watch in New Haven, Connecticut, praised neighbors for calling the police on two Black kids riding bicycles. Throughout, Alexander considers how Black youth are finding resilience and strength in a moment when they are constantly faced with traumatizing displays of the fragility of Black life, and how Black Americans move not to forget, but to 

Elsewhere, Alexander provides lyrical contemplations on subjects both broad and specific, including dance, poetry, Confederate monuments, and coming face to face with racist imagery on the campus of Yale University, where she was a professor and department chair for 15 years, until 2016. Taken together, the essays that shape 

 provide a space for Alexander to begin a dialogue that artfully steps backward and forward through time, reflecting on how society has changed, and the spaces where growth is still urgently needed.

Elizabeth Alexander Explores the Grief, Gratitude, and Creativity of the “Trayvon Generation”

To speak with self-described “citizen artist” 

 about her creative practice is to talk with her about art as a means of revitalization and protection. Particularly for the Black community.

The self-taught sculptor, poet, and performer lives and works in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a predominantly African American area that has long struggled with poverty and gun violence. There, she handcrafts sculptures out of locally found objects that she embellishes with materials including beads, glass, fabric, and wood to create what she calls “power figures”: large, often human-shaped forms that draw inspiration from the Kongo people’s 

, protective charms believed to hold spiritual energy. Through these forms, german offers gateways to collective healing, and confronts the historical and day-to-day forces of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and misogynoir.

german’s output extends out of her ongoing activism. In 2011, after moving her studio outside of her home, her new space began to regularly attract young, curious onlookers, whom german in turn gave art materials and encouraged to make works of their own. From there, she founded Love Front Porch, an art-making initiative for Homewood’s women, children, and families. Three years after that, the effort became part of ARTHouse, a grassroots community center german created where anyone can visit and create. “I’m literally watching people around me wake back up to their creative capacity,” she says. “Every work of art that I make has work to do.”

The insights and energy german receives from the community around her play a crucial role in her own art-making, and helped inform her new body of work filling the Kasmin gallery booth at this week’s 

 (May 5–8) in New York City. The sculptures, which are presented in dialogue with pieces from german’s 2021 series 

The Artist Channels 33 Intimate Technologies of Soul,” explore the physical and metaphysical phenomena that can affect the heart. Less tangible items appear in the long, unconventional list of materials that comprise each piece. One figure, titled “Love Poem for Lil Kim” (2022), for example, combines pink tennis shoe key rings and bamboo earrings with “shame and its opposite,” “love and resistance,” and “the death of several of your friends and no real way to process it in the public.”

For those who come in contact with them, german wants her sculptures to encourage self-awareness. Often, she has watched people interact with her figures through personal memories—a lard can or an old radio can speak to them, awakening something inside, and opening doors to curiosity and an expansion of the mind. “I’m interested not necessarily in what people think about my work, but in what they 

 when they’re in proximity to it,” she says. “I’m interested in the feeling languages and technologies that people experience, because that’s how the work is active for me.”

The artist’s frequent use of mirrors and shoes make it easy for viewers to see themselves in her work, and to identify with the individual pieces that give each figure life. One recent sculpture, “Black Girl on Skateboard Going Where She’s Got to Go to Do What She’s Got To Do and It Might Not Have Anything to Do With You, Ever” (2022), consists of a full-bodied Black child in the midst of skating, with her left arm outstretched for balance and her braids trailing behind her. “The form recognizes the engine of joy, the engine of deciding for oneself to own,” german says, “and to live, and to 

, within the heart and the language of your own joy.” Like all of her figures, it exists to help us center ourselves back into consciousness.

vanessa german’s Collaged Sculptures Are Ornate Icons of Healing and Protection

Chanice is a poet and writer based in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in 

Chanice Hughes-Greenberg

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