Red Summer

Author: Amaud Jamaul Johnson

Publisher: Tupelo Press (2006)

This haunting debut collection explores a rash of race riots that swept the United States during the summer of 1919. With a tender lyrical quality, reminiscent of the blues, Johnson moves through trauma and personal catastrophe to champion the endurance of the human spirit. These poems are underscored by music so unsettling they leave the voices of the dead lingering in the ear.

"Johnson's Red Summer startles and impresses with its sheer range of vision, at one moment giving us a hushed, confessional poem, at another a poem of public, political consciousness. Red Summer gives us the stirring debut of a restorative new American voice."

–Carl Phillips