Acknowledgements

To study slavery is to consider grief in all its permutations, grief in the expansive interiority of black life. In this book, I have gone everywhere these elegies have taken me. All journeys, no matter how winding or circular, lead somewhere. I am fortunate that this journey has led me here, and this is in no small part due to those with whom I have come into contact. To Victoria Hindley at the MIT Press, my gratitude knows no limit, for you have ushered this project from its infancy to its fruition. I thank you for that. To the rest of the MIT/Brown University Digital Publications team: Allison Levy, Gabriela Bueno Gibbs, Nicholas DiSabatino, Holiday Shapiro, Olivia Lafferty, Kathleen Caruso, Crystal Brusch, Julia Collins, and Jennifer Braga—thank you for the care you have shown me while I made my way through this work. To the anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, I thank you for the time you have given to the project and the suggestions that have made their way into the final product.

Black Elegies began as a curated set of images/texts for the CARE SYLLABUS module at MASS MoCA. I thank Victoria Papa and Levi Prombaum for the invitation to think through some of the sites of grief I have highlighted in this book. I have presented portions of Black Elegies at Emory University, Dartmouth College (Futures of American Studies), Harvard University, the American Studies Association, McGill University, Brown University, Black Portraitures (Paris), and Yale University. I have received funding for Black Elegies from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, and a fellowship from the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research at Harvard University. The time and resources these awards have afforded me cannot be overstated. I am incredibly lucky and so very grateful they arrived when they did. At the Hutchins Center, I was in great company, spurred on by fellows who were brilliant and generous, kind, and intentional. In addition to Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Krishna Winston, my thanks to Rashauna Johnson, Reighan Gillam, Nii Ayikwei Parkes, Faith Lois Smith, Antônia Gabriela Pereira de Araùjo, Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Stevie “Dr. View” Johnson, Mandy Izadi, David “Dee-1” Augustine, Shirley Moody-Turner, Celeste-Marie Bernier, Jim Downs, Jorge Delgadillo Núñez, Panashe Chigumadzi, Tamary Kudita, Aabid Allibhai, Rhae Lynn Barnes, K’Naan Warsame, and Nancy Jacobs. During my Hutchins Center presentation, Emily Greenwood offered the word I had been searching for as I considered the range of this archive: “ecstasy,” and this allowed me to delve into the project anew.

Dartmouth College is enjoyable in no small part due to the following people, and I thank them for it: Naaborko Sackeyfio-Lenoch, Vievee Francis, Shontay Delalue, Adedoyin Teriba, Jénee Potts, Kianna Middleton, Donald Pease, Kianny Antigua, Shaonta’ Allen, Jorge Cuellar, Alexander Chee, Bailey Thomas, Jane Henderson, Carolyn Dever, Jermaine Wilcox, Trica Keaton, Matthew Olzmann, Mary Coffey, Endia Hayes, Jami Powell, Alysia Garrison, Tanya Edwards, Dean Madden, Ella Bell Smith, Charlotte Bacon, Allie Martin, Kate Gibbel, Susan Brison, Ingrid Brioso Rieumont, Alisa Swindell, Colleen Glenney Boggs, Tricia Treacy, Iyabo Kwayana, Mauricio Acuña, Peter Orner, Melisa (Meli) Zeiger, Jodi Kim, and Chloe Poston: what a rural posse we are! I am and will forever be indebted to the students in my Black Elegies seminar. Their profound and deeply generative analyses held these varied texts together like a poem in free verse.

My friends, family, and my chosen kin have sustained me throughout this process and I cannot thank them enough. To Vanessa Monique Liles I owe an innate sense of justice, joy, and regal earthiness. Vanessa accompanied me to various slave plantations throughout the U.S. South, and held her faith in the history of human perseverance. Shirley Carrie Hartman practices deep thought and deep care for those she loves. I am lucky to count myself among them. Nadine Adjoa Smith has been a sustaining force in my life for twenty-five years, and now along with Ayo Jumoke I hope that we continue to make heart space and time for each other as always. To Sandy Alexandre (and Zora Felice)—all the best things and in boisterous abundance. Fatima El-Tayeb, Eunsong Kim, Michael Chaney, Lisa Lowe, Helen Elaine Lee, Iyko Day, Monica White Ndounou, Roderick Ferguson, Kymberly Newberry, Michael Boyce Gillespie, Vievee Francis, Thy Phu, Karilyn Crockett, Amanda Russhell Wallace, Aneeka Henderson, Jyoti Puri, Nikki A. Greene (girl, girl), Gail Lewis, Dell Marie Hamilton, K. Melchor Quick Hall, Kaysha Corinealdi, Marcia Chatelain, Nicole N. Ivy, and Patricia Ann Lott (the great Leo-sister): Thank you for your presence and the gift of your friendship. To my siblings: Shanesa, Yolanda, Bryan, Norman, Lyonel, Winston, Grace, and Oliver—I thank you for your unrelenting dedication to all things joyous. I thank Silvia Atilano and Ivelisse Viruet for everything they do that helps me to be who I am in the world.

And of course, to the women of the Dark Room: Race and Visual Culture Studies Seminar, I give my abiding thanks for conversations that have enlivened and enriched my thinking over the past decade. I would be nowhere without the grounding in visual culture you have helped me to sustain over the years.

To the artists examined in this book, I offer my deepest thanks: Roy DeCarava, Carrie Mae Weems, Ross Gay, Jennie C. Jones, Vievee Francis, Ibeyi, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Saidiya Hartman, Dell Marie Hamilton, Calida Rawles, Audre Lorde, John Coltrane, Michelle Cliff, Kahlil Joseph, Toby Sisson, Toni Morrison, Lucille Clifton, Steve McQueen, Jeannette Ehlers, Robert Hayden, Amanda Russhell Wallace, Gwendolyn Brooks, Barry Jenkins, Marvin Gaye, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Carl Phillips, Rebecca Hall, Toni Cade Bambara, James Baldwin, Jesmyn Ward, Alice Smith, and Mary Lee Bendolph: without you, nothing.

There was once a librarian in Throggs Neck who allowed nine-year-old me to drift over to the adult side of the library (you had to be at least twelve years old to visit without a parent or guardian). I was on the hunt for a Judy Blume novel. I found a book of black poetry. My life has never been the same.

To my father, Harold “Sylvester” Brown, I owe many things. Here, I want to thank him for his profound empathy and humanity. And the way he sees the gem of goodness in every endeavor, from gardening to curating music.

And lastly,

For humor, for art, for music (forever), for excess, abundance, for faith, for joy, for we who “do language,” for the senses and the sound, for poetry, for fury, for each and for every, for sun and for sea, for us, for us, for us, for we.