Rereading this before Sunrise on the Reaping and it really does hold up. I read it in a day, still sobbed... it's more horrific in ways reading it as an adult (the age of the characters, but also understanding what inspired the setting and how much it reflects some issues still). I'm so excited to reread the rest of the trilogy! 

This was a phenomenal read! This collection is inspired by research the author did on the Chicago Race Riots. Most poems are inspired by a specific passage of a document from the time about it. There is a good mix of kinds of poems in form and content. The photographs added yet another layer. This is not one I will soon forget and I am excited to read more from this author. 

Visceral and haunting. Short, but in that it is purposeful without being repetitive. I really loved the strings throughout of the poems with religious characters, as well as the Self-Portrait poems. 

Overall, this was pretty solid for such a short book looking at so much. So, while I do have criticism, I think this was good overall, especially the last chapter of the book. 

I do think it could have benefited from some additional historical context or elaboration more generally (parts had events or claims briefly mentioned but not really explained or fleshed out. While some sections do this well, it made the parts without it feel more obviously like something was missing). Similarly, his writing style is descriptive and evocative, but there were definitely parts that ended up being overwritten here. 

This had some interesting insight and some sections that were very profound and beautiful. I also really liked the beginning discussion of the power of a story, as that is a key theme throughout. Choosing this book to talk about book banning was also cool, but that is the weakest chapter and could have been integrated more successfully with the other segments to get across how it connected thematically. That I think gets at some of what was missing -- while we do get some amount of discussion relating the Africa trip to the Palestine trip, there could have been more similar direct points of connection discussed for the other chapters as well. 

Still, it is great that an author like him has put a spotlight on Palestine and is also talking about some of his political development as it is happening. I am hopeful that this will lead people to looking at even more books on the topic.