Dr. Joshua Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)-which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), and Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT.
"Poet and scholar Bennett narrates his latest, combining memoir, biography, and criticism to celebrate how African American communities protect their children and nurture their excellence. He submits himself as Exhibit A: an early reader and able student whose family and (most) teachers devoted themselves to giving him the tools and opportunities to excel. He twines his own memories with explorations of the youthful experiences of such remarkable talents as Malcolm X, Stevie Wonder, and Gwendolyn Brooks. Both practiced in reciting Scripture from childhood and a slam poet, Bennett is no stranger to the spoken word. Here his delivery is smooth and mostly understated, occasionally rising in formality to greet the poems, both his own and others', that occasionally punctuate his prose.
A stirring recognition of communal uplift."
