Description
Book SynopsisNamed Best Chicago Poet by The Chicago Reader, Kevin Coval channels Howard Zinn to celebrate the Windy City's hidden history. Known variously as the Windy City, the City of Big Shoulders or Chi-Raq, Chicago is one of the most widely celebrated, routinely demonized, and thoroughly contested cities in the world. Chicago is the city of Gwendolyn Brooks and Chief Keef, Al Capone and Richard Wright, Lucy Parsons and Nelson Algren, Harold Washington and Studs Terkel. It is the city of Fred Hampton, House Music, and the Haymarket Martyrs. Writing in the tradition of Howard Zinn, Kevin Coval's A People's History of Chicago celebrates the history of this great American city from the perspective of those on the margins, whose stories often go untold. These seventy-seven poems (for the city's seventy-seven neighborhoods) honor the everyday lives and enduring resistance of the city's workers, poor people, and people of color, whose cultural and political revolutions continue to shape the social l
Trade Review"Kevin Coval made me understand what it is to be a poet, what it is to be an artist and what it is to serve the people." –Chance the Rapper "...incantatory spoken-word assailing notions of racial purity” –New York Times "Kevin Coval has given us a gift, a collection of heartfelt, piercing poems, stories really, about America’s city." –Alex Kotlowitz author of There Are No Children Here "This vibrant, dynamic collection of vignettes exposes the naked truth of our fair city." –Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teacher's Union "The spine of this book of the People's History of Chicago is the people's resistance and struggle for justice and a fair shake. Coval is in the Chicago Tradition – fire, earth, and endless blues." –Angela Jackson, author of Where I Must Go, winner of the American Book Award
"Kevin Coval made me understand what it is to be a poet, what it is to be an artist and what it is to serve the people." Chance the Rapper "...incantatory spoken-word assailing notions of racial purity” New York Times "Kevin Coval has given us a gift, a collection of heartfelt, piercing poems, stories really, about America’s city." Alex Kotlowitz author of There Are No Children Here "This vibrant, dynamic collection of vignettes exposes the naked truth of our fair city." Karen Lewis, president of the Chicago Teacher's Union "The spine of this book of the People's History of Chicago is the people's resistance and struggle for justice and a fair shake. Coval is in the Chicago Tradition fire, earth, and endless blues." Angela Jackson, author of Where I Must Go, winner of the American Book Award
Table of Contents1. chicagu 2. shikaakwa 3. LaSalle wrote it down wrong 4. the father is a Black man 5. The Treaty of Chicago 6. player with railroads 7. hog butcher for the world 8. Albert Parsons can hang 9. how to be down 10. the L gets open 11. the white city 12. Eugene Debs reads Marx in prison 13. reversing the flow / \ / of the Chicago river 14. The Burnham Plan of Chicago 15. The Great Migration 16. The Eastland Disaster 17. the murder of Eugene Williams 18. Society for Human Rights 19. Thomas Dorsey, Gospel's Daddy 20. Katherine Dunham opens her dance school 21. Gwendolyn Brooks stands in The Mecca 22. The South Side Writer's Group (a broke cento) 23. Hansberry vs. Lee 24. Muddy Waters goes electric 25. Nelson Algren meets Simone de Beauvoir at the palmer house 26. pickle with a peppermint stick 27. Sun Ra becomes a synthesizer 28. hugh hefner, a play boy 29. the Black monk of wrigley field 30. University of Illinois-Chicago 31. at the Roberts Temple Church of G-d, 4021 S. State St. 32. The Division Street Riots 33. Martin Luther King prays in marquette park 34. Chicago/america's greatest listener 35. Carl Sandburg Village (where my parents met) 36. Wall of Respect 37. AfriCOBRA 38. the wrestler: a chicago poster boy 39. The Assassination of Chairman Fred Hampton 40. Ray Yoshida, Chicago Imagist, Dotted Charmer 41. don l. lee becomes Haki Madhubuti 42. The Chicago 21 Plan 43. new town 44. leaving Aldine 45. Disco Demolition 46. mayor byrne moves into & out of Cabrini Green 47. Ron Hardy plays the record backwards 48. the assignation of Rudy Lozano 49. Marc Smith invents the poetry slam 50. collateral damage 51. The Day Harold Died 52. the year Michael Jordan breaks the law 53. patronage 54. fresh to death 55. molemen beat tapes 56. mayor daley wishes the white city (a Chi-ku) 57. Graffiti Blasters: an erasure 58. NAFTA 59. The 1994 World Cup (a second city improv sketch) 60. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act 61. The Etymology of Chicago Joe 62. Common's Resurrection 63. the supreme court makes color illegal 64. Erasing the Green 65. Ida B. Wells testifies in the ghost town of The Ida B. Wells Homes 66. how to teach poetry in Chicago public schools 67. Lenard Clark peddles for air 68. baby come on: an ode to footwork 69. Juice serves eminem at Scribble Jam 70. A Moratorium on the Death Penalty 71. praise the house party 72. Día de las Madres 73. the crown fountain in millennium park 74. Kanye says what's on everybody's mind 75. The White Sox win the World Series: Pop's ars poetica 76. the coach is a bear 77. i wasn't in grant park when obama was elected 78. Republic Window Workers Sit-in 79. A Eulogy for Jeff Maldonado Jr. 80. the night the modern wing was bombed 81. Falling Up 82. when King Louie first heard the word chiraq 83. an elegy for Dr. Margaret Burroughs 84. a dedication to the inaugural poet 85. rod blagojevich at the end of his run 86. #HeyMa is trending on Mother’s Day 87. memoir of the red x 88. Teachers Strike in The Chicago Tradition 89. we real 90. standards 91. during Ramadan the gates of heaven are open 92. Chicago Cultural Center: a battle rap 93. Ms. Devine explains the meaning of Modern Art: a found poem 94. 82 shot, 14 murdered: the two cities celebrate independence day 95. why Derrick Rose 96. We Charge Genocide 97. there is a target on the grave of Cabrini Green 98. atoning for the neo-liberal in all or rahm emmanuel as the chicken on Kapparot 99. 400 days 100. Chicago has my heart
