About this item
Highlights
- Social justice is an ideal.
- Author(s): Marcus Harrison Green
- 204 Pages
- Literary Collections, American
Description
About the Book
In this collection Green bears sharp witness to the Black Lives Matter movement, his own journey into & out of religious faith, his grandmother's lessons, mental illness, human mortality, hypocrisy, & more.
Book Synopsis
Social justice is an ideal. It's not a reality. And while there are moments that make it feel tantalizingly close, the moment that follows often punts it right back to the far distance. Growing up black in south Seattle, journalist and essayist Marcus Harrison Green has a keen sense of exactly where and how things break down. From his own experience in the classroom and at the hands of police to his fierce dissection of the racism baked into media and journalism, Green makes poetry of the clarity that comes after long reflection.
In this collection, Green bears sharp witness to the Black Lives Matter movement, his own journey into and out of religious faith, his grandmother's lessons, his battle with bipolar disorder, human mortality, blatant hypocrisy, and much more.
He shines a light on what hurts the most deeply in us: not only the brutal injustice of a world built by the powerful for the powerful, but the close proximity of that brutality to a persistent kernel of hope.
Yet because there is hope, there is conviction. Green never falters in the knowledge that the struggle itself is something to tie ourselves to and define ourselves by. With astute analyses, evocative imagery, profound empathy, and the ability to laugh at it all, these essays, even with their collective weight, leave us much lighter than they found us.
Finalist for the Washington State Book Award for Creative Nonfiction
Review Quotes
Marcus Harrison Green's incisive, big-hearted writing always stands out. He nails a high-difficulty landing every time, displaying the rare patience and empathy necessary to understand how someone can come to any point of view, while wielding the moral clarity and sociological insight that forces us to confront our own failures in facing the truth about poverty and racism. Along the way, he writes about himself with deep vulnerability in a way that illuminates not himself but the subjects of his writing, whom he clearly loves.More writers should emulate the way Green makes humanity and hope burst forth from the dispiriting statistics we see everyday. He never stops at "Why is this happening?", instead persuading us to ask ourselves, "What are we doing about it?" Lawrence Lanahan, The Lines Between Us