Americana: Memory, Resistance, and America

Read a Poem a Day! America changes. Memory does not. Americana is a collection of poems about growing up Black in a country wrestling with war, race, identity, and change. Seen partly through the eyes of a child coming of age during the Vietnam War and the cultural upheaval of the 1960s and 1970s, these poems move through family memories, Black history, racial tension, protest, humor, anger, hope, and the complicated promise of America. Influenced by poets such as Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka, Allen Ginsberg, and Ai, Charles Harvey blends personal reflection with a voice that refuses to remain silent. Some poems look back with tenderness. Others question the stories America tells about itself. Two newer pieces connect that earlier era to the country we live in now, reminding us that the struggles of the past have not entirely passed. For readers drawn to poems about Black America, social change, memory, and truth, Americana offers a journey through the nation we inherited—and the nation we are still trying to become. The past is still speaking. These poems listen—and answer. Excerpt: New York! Herds of humanity Graze on street corner slop and ride in the bellies Of silver worms beneath city gutters Street people are ragged and unfashionably stinky. Everyone else is fashionably ragged. "Andy" sells me a beaded sweater off an old lady's dead shoulders. A roguish Puerto Rican painter copies A Robert Colescott painting as his own black creation. Got all dressed up to go to the theatre in Harlem. Got there stinky and hot--Harlem, Who bombed it? Noise all night long in Brooklyn. No ugly people live in New York Everyone is Café au lait. Tall boy with five-inch hair Sits wide-legged on the sub in baggy trousers. His throat is stiff with defiance, But his dark Eyes linger in mine for a moment. Everything is for sale in New York Even a hug from Daddy Long Legs. ***** Other Notable poetry volumes by the author: The Last Supper 3AM: Poems and Stories From the Other Mind Bark Too