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A bracing poetic reflection on the deadly power of the white imagination from acclaimed writer Cornelius Eady.This spare and haunting play takes its inspiration from the case of Susan Smith, a white woman who murdered her two young children by strapping them into the back seat of her car and pushing it into a lake. In statements to the police, Smith claimed she had been carjacked by a young Black man. In
Brutal Imagination, adapted from his National Book Award-finalist poetry cycle, Eady conjures this imaginary Black man as Mr. Zero, who appears in order to “to get things done” when white people need a scapegoat for the consequences of their own actions. As Smith spins her story into more and more elaborate designs, Mr. Zero begins to rebel against his appointed task, leading Smith, and us, slowly closer to the dark secret at the center of the play.
Brutal Imagination implicates not just the small town of Union, South Carolina, but an entire American racial imaginary in which a white woman’s story, no matter how ludicrous, is always believed if it implicates a Black man.
About the author
Cornelius Eady is a poet, playwright and musician born in Rochester, NY. He is Co-founder of Cave Canem and is Professor of English and Chair of Excellence in Poetry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (winner of the Lamont Prize), The Gathering of My Name, Hardheaded Weather and Brutal Imagination, (finalist for The National Book Award in Poetry). He has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray in the production of several works of theater, including You Don’t Miss Your Water, Running Man (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Drama in 1999), Fangs, and Brutal Imagination (winner of the Oppenheimer Award). His awards include Fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, and he was The Miller Family Endowed Chair in Literature and Writing and Professor in English and Theater at The University of Missouri-Columbia.
Summary
A bracing poetic reflection on the deadly power of the white imagination from acclaimed writer Cornelius Eady.
This spare and haunting play takes its inspiration from the case of Susan Smith, a white woman who murdered her two young children by strapping them into the back seat of her car and pushing it into a lake. In statements to the police, Smith claimed she had been carjacked by a young Black man. In Brutal Imagination, adapted from his National Book Award-finalist poetry cycle, Eady conjures this imaginary Black man as Mr. Zero, who appears in order to “to get things done” when white people need a scapegoat for the consequences of their own actions. As Smith spins her story into more and more elaborate designs, Mr. Zero begins to rebel against his appointed task, leading Smith, and us, slowly closer to the dark secret at the center of the play. Brutal Imagination implicates not just the small town of Union, South Carolina, but an entire American racial imaginary in which a white woman’s story, no matter how ludicrous, is always believed if it implicates a Black man.
Foreword
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