Description
Book SynopsisA collection of creative writing and art about COVID-19 at the onset of the pandemic by people from vulnerable populations. Bringing together artwork, creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry,
Essential Voices shares the perspectives of people from vulnerable populations as they were affected by COVID-19 in 2020, before the release of the vaccine. The pieces in this volume represent a range of writers and artists, some from international locations, whose work may be less likely to be seen because of race, ethnicity, or current legal status. Contributors include individuals who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, or seniors; those who are immunocompromised or undocumented; those working in medicine, food service, factories, and sanitation; and parents who were unable to work from home, along with individuals who were being held in correctional facilities or facing mental health concerns. This multigenre collection preserves the history of the pandemic by documenting and publishing these essential voices.
Essential Voices will be of interest to readers who want to consider the diverse lived experiences of people during the pandemic when outcomes were most uncertain. It will also be useful for teachers, students, activists, and policy makers in a variety of settings, including government, hospitals, prisons, homeless shelters, colleges, art schools, and secondary schools.
Trade Review “The work is emotionally moving. The attention to the quotidian, lived experiences of those affected offers unique insights into a global catastrophe that has turned precious lives and deaths into statistics. . . . An important cultural response.”—Darius Bost, author of Evidence of Being: The Black Gay Cultural Renaissance and the Politics of Violence
“This is a text of powerful firsthand accounts that capture the current context in critical and intersectional ways that are attentive to how individual lives are shaped by structural realities. It is important that these voices are engaged.”—Nana Osei-Kofi, Oregon State University
Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Foreword |Maria del Guadalupe Davidson
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Fear: It lives in droplets
- Monster under Me
Fiction |Nathan Blalock
- Table of Contents for a Manual of Pandemic Response Protocols
Poetry |Rasha Abdulhadi
- The Worst of Times
Essay |Frances Ogamba
- Essentials
Poetry |Maria James-Thiaw
- Recipe for Troubled Times
Poetry |Linda Parsons
- Night Guard
Poetry |Linda Parsons
- Pandemic Pandemonium
Poetry |Kenneth Moore
- Even the Robins Know
Poetry |Robert Okaji
- Distance: As we moan into the phone
- How Corona Evolves or Makes Us Evolve, or We Have to Evolve Together
Poetry |Xiaoly Li
- Sequestered Alone
Poetry |Joan Hofmann
- To whom it may concern,
Letter and Poetry |Alyce Copeland
- Love in the Time of Corona
Poetry |John Cuetara
- What We Know about the Fatalities
Fiction |Lisa Michelle Moore
- Do Lockdowns Ever End?
Poetry |Diego Islas
- Wish You Were Here
Poetry |Joan Goodreau
- Comfort
Poetry |Celeste Blair
- Didn’t We Once Call It Love?
Poetry |E. Ethelbert Miller
- The Cheat
Poetry |Rayna Momen
- How I’ve Survived This Long, Part 3
Poetry |Kasha Martin Gauthier
- What it’s like to get married in prison during a pandemic
Essay |Christopher Blackwell
- Mask: A parachute that catches my breath
- Invisi dis ability in COVID Times
Essay |Catherine Young
- Corona Spring
Poetry |Deborah DeNicola
- Unmasked
Poetry |Faiza Anum
- The Fabric of Society
Fiction |Alice Benson
- Masked
Poetry |Christine Rhein
- Melt Down
Poetry |Mary K O’Melveny
- May 6, 2020
Poetry |Kevin McLellan
- Barriers
Essay |Robbie Gamble
- fromThe Quarantinas
Poetry |Stephanie Lenox
- Labor: Warnings on the floor
- Bezos Knows
Poetry |Ranney Campbell
- We Are Family: A Lesson Learned as an On-line English Teacher during COVID-19
Essay |Maya Lear Brewer
- Line Speed
Poetry |Ben Gunsberg
- Staying Socially and Politically Active while Socially Distancing: Making the Issues around COVID-19 Part of One’s Activism
Essay |C. Liegh McInnis
- Essential Medical Workers Are to Report to Duty
Poetry |Michele Bombardier
- These Hands
Fiction |Z. S. Roe
- Postcard from Pandemic
Poetry |Robert Okaji
- A Classroom Hums in Wait.
Poetry |Vanessa Chica Ferreira
- Sickness: My stomach charlie-horsed
- My COVID Story
Essay |Brett L. Massey
- Essentially Unseen
Poetry |Lavinia Kumar
- Nudge
Poetry |Phrieda Bogere
- Elegy
Poetry |Bianca Alyssa PÉrez
- I Cut Up My Hillary T-shirt to Make aCOVID Mask
Poetry |Joan E. Bauer
- A Story of Constantine, COVID-19, and Pandora
Fiction |Waliyah Oladipo
- New Age
Poetry |Robert J. Levy
- Alcohol Woman
Poetry |Deidra Suwanee Dees
- Grief: Interjected like a comma
- Elegy, Interrupted
Poetry |Emily Ransdell
- My Mother Whispers, Doesn’t He Look So Peaceful
Poetry |Bianca Alyssa PÉrez
- A Sonnet for the Living
Poetry |Bianca Alyssa PÉrez
- #covidclarity
Essay |Marcelle Mentor
- Trapped
Poetry |Deidra Suwanee Dees
- Love, Coronavirus
Poetry |Lisa Suhair Majaj
- A Poet Attempts to Homeschool, Week 6: Fractions
Poetry |Kasha Martin Gauthier
- Evaporating Villanelle during a Time of Pandemic
Poetry |Jen Karetnick
- A Day in the Life
Essay |Eric Ebers
- What You Want to Say
Poetry |Maria Rouphail
- Zoom Funeral
Poetry |Laura Glenn
- For Jon, Who Died Because of Time
Poetry |Rayna Momen
- Survival: Remember every surface you touch
- Essential Nonessentials in Lockdown
Poetry |Katy Giebenhain
- The Eaters
Fiction |Danielle Lauren
- Off-Script
Poetry |Monserrat Escobar Arteaga
- Heroes
Fiction |Mark Brazaitis
- 15 Mar 2020—A (a roll in the hand is worth two on the shelf) Haiku
Poetry |Peter Joel
- We Will Sing of Gone Bodies Some Days from Now
Poetry |Blessing Omeiza Ojo
- In Times of Quarantine
Poetry |Rosalie Hendon
- Halmoni’s Kimchi Pancakes
Recipe |Elia Min
- COVID Curriculum
Essay |Dominique Traverse Locke
- Monkeys
Poetry |Fabiyas M V
- Justice and Reckoning: Colonial co-morbidities
- How to Make White Supremacy Generative/How to Survive a Pandemic
Essay |Ahimsa Timoteo BodhrÁn
- Blackout
Poetry |Thomas Beckwith
- The Marrow-Sucking Grip of Immigration Injustice
Poetry |Kim Denning
- White
Poetry |Roan Davis
- we’ve been here before
Poetry |Liseli A. Fitzpatrick
- Crosstown
Poetry |Ahimsa Timoteo BodhrÁn
- My Uncertain Story
Essay |Noe Hernandez
- Em Ontvlecetv / Invaded
Poetry |Deidra Suwanee Dees
- POV
Poetry |Jameka Hartley
- The Home of the Brave
Poetry |David Antonio Reyes
- Things I Never Told You
Poetry |Steve Ramirez
- Environment and Place: Let the river turn the stone
- Lines before Lockdown
Poetry |Lisa Suhair Majaj
- hymn
Poetry |Caroline Furr
- May Shivers
Poetry |Lukpata Lomba Joseph
- For the emptiers have emptied them out
Poetry |Alan Smith Soto
- While the World Fell Apart around Us
Poetry |Aimee Nicole
- COVID Spring Comes to Southeast Pennsylvania
Poetry |Kenneth Pobo
- 2020
Poetry |Yuan Changming
- Folded Up
Poetry |donnarkevic
- Social Distance
Poetry |Fred Shaw
- Austin
Poetry |Jeffrey Taylor
- Hope: Beyond sorrow there’s a gardenia tree
- During quarantine, I embrace myself as a long-hauler,
Poetry |Jen Karetnick
- Magdalena
Poetry |Deborah “Deby” Rodriguez
- Too Loud to Sleep
Essay |Natalie Mislang Mann
- When the Games Return
Poetry |E. Ethelbert Miller
- Wasted
Essay |Celeste Blair
- This Is Not the End of the World
Poetry |Darius Atefat-Peckham
- Touch Screen
Fiction |Mohini Malhotra
- Notes
- Contributors
- About the Editors
