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A debut collection of lyric poems interrogating the generational implications of the Great Migration to Northern California.
Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water, a debut collection by E. Hughes, marries personal narrative with historical excavation to articulate the intricacies of Black familial love, life, and pain. Tracing the experiences of a southern Black family, their migration to the San Francisco Bay area, and the persistent anti-Blackness there (
despite the state’s insistence that it is/was not involved in the US’ projects of imperialism or chattel slavery), Hughes illuminates the intersections of history, grief, and violence.
At the book’s heart is “The Accounts of Mammy Pleasant,” a persona poem written from the perspective of the formerly enslaved abolitionist and financier Mary Ellen Pleasant who is thought to have helped fund John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. Alongside this historical account, Hughes deftly weaves in the story of a contemporary Black family navigating the generational trauma resulting from the Great Migration: domestic violence and racialized violence, familial love and loyalty, the work of parenting, and the work of being a child.
Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water reveals in its pages that, while many things have changed over time, ultimately the question of what “freedom” meant and looked like for Black people in the early 20th century retains the same murkiness and contradictions for Black people today.
Sommario
BLACK WOMEN STANDING ANKLE-DEEP IN PACIFIC WATER
1
I RAN UNTIL I COULD NO LONGER
AFTER A BEATING
RIPPLING THROUGH THE DARK
PORTRAIT OF MY FATHER
TRIPTYCH
RUPTURE IN MEMORY
EVEN NOW
NEGLECT OR BAPTISM LISTICLE
I CALLED HOME IN JANUARY
BECKWOURTH PASS
AS HER FEET TAP THE BRASS PEDALS
APORIA
2
THE ACCOUNTS OF MAMMY PLEASANT
3
HISTORIOGRAPHY
MEET CUTE IN REDWOOD CITY
BAD HABIT
MUST HAVE LEFT ITS MARK—
ROUTINE
BARBERSHOP
MEET CUTE IN MENLO PARK
MY MOTHER AT TWENTY-ONE
THE NIGHT IS AN ERUPTION OF NEBULAS
HUSBAND HOME FROM THE MARINES
FAMILY LORE
FUNERAL
IN SAN JOSE, WE SLICED TOMATOES
ELEGY
EVEN NOW—
FORGIVENESS PANTOUM
IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION OF HOME, THE ROAD
OUR PAST BOWED LIKE THE BRANCHES OF A MADRONE TREE
EPILOGUE
BIRTHS AND DEATHS: A CHRONOLOGY
NOTES
Info autore
E. Hughes' poems have been published or are forthcoming in
The Rumpus, Guernica, Poet Lore, Indiana Review, and
Gulf Coast Magazine-among others. They are a Cave Canem fellow and have been a finalist for the 2021 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, longlisted for the 2021 Granum Fellowship Prize, and a semifinalist of the 2022 and 2023 92Y Discovery Contest. In 2021, they received their MFA+MA from the Litowitz Creative Writing Program at Northwestern University. Currently, Hughes is a PhD student in Philosophy at Emory University studying black aesthetics, psychoanalysis, and poststructuralism.
Riassunto
A debut collection of lyric poems interrogating the generational implications of the Great Migration to Northern California.
Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water, a debut collection by E. Hughes, marries personal narrative with historical excavation to articulate the intricacies of Black familial love, life, and pain. Tracing the experiences of a southern Black family, their migration to the San Francisco Bay area, and the persistent anti-Blackness there (despite the state’s insistence that it is/was not involved in the US’ projects of imperialism or chattel slavery), Hughes illuminates the intersections of history, grief, and violence.
At the book’s heart is “The Accounts of Mammy Pleasant,” a persona poem written from the perspective of the formerly enslaved abolitionist and financier Mary Ellen Pleasant who is thought to have helped fund John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry. Alongside this historical account, Hughes deftly weaves in the story of a contemporary Black family navigating the generational trauma resulting from the Great Migration: domestic violence and racialized violence, familial love and loyalty, the work of parenting, and the work of being a child. Ankle-Deep in Pacific Water reveals in its pages that, while many things have changed over time, ultimately the question of what “freedom” meant and looked like for Black people in the early 20th century retains the same murkiness and contradictions for Black people today.
