Description
Ukweli is the Swahili word for truth. This book meets this moment in America as a healing truth to overcome the trauma of slavery and the decades of violence that followed it. The personal accounts and insights from forty-five writers and poets will educate White Americans about the systematic racial bias employed to stymie African American progress.
Ukweli provides insight into the struggles Black people have faced as they’ve made substantial contributions to America, and helped to define its soul. It shows a part of American history often overlooked or misunderstood. This book is inspired by a poetry, lecture, and dialogue series of the same name organized by poet Horace Mungin in 2020 at Charleston’s McLeod Plantation.
Praise for Ukweli
“This book is about how Blacks faced atrocities committed by their White ‘cousins.’ They maintained their religion and customs like ‘Watch Night.’ Music and art also got them through a nightmare of uppity Blacks burned alive, lynchings, land theft, and unequal justice. This Gullah book is one of the most important on race in decades. I hope it’s not buried by book reviewers who see Black literature in terms of one-at-a-time tokens.”
— Ishmael Reed, American poet, novelist, essayist, songwriter, playwright, editor and publisher
“You will pick up this book thinking, ‘This is too much!’ and you will finish this book thinking, ‘I wish there was more!’ Mungin and Frazier’s collected collision of poetry and prose is a perfectly unsettling way to bring new insight into these decidedly unsettled conversations. The pain rings in these truths and the reconciliation reigns in these truth-tellings.
A required read. Ukewli, indeed.
— Tonya M. Matthews, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer, International African American Museum, Charleston
“Meticulously researched, objectively analyzed, judiciously provocative, and sublimely written…”
— Henry E. Darby, principal, North Charleston High School
