PBS NewsHour Spends Time With Danez Smith

At PBS NewsHour, Jennifer Hijazi visits Danez Smith, author of Don't Call Us Dead. As Hijazi explains, "An award-winning spoken word artist, Smith’s 'Dear White America,' was a biting, cascade of a poem that tackles endemic violence, both physical and emotional, against black bodies." With their book, she writes, Smith "wanted to imagine justice for the victims of 'all the little and all the big violences. [...] Smith says they can no longer argue the value of black lives to the large swathes of white America that can’t already see the importance of the struggle against racism and police violence." From there: 

As long as there are laws and policies still in place that allow this violence to occur, Smith said, history will continue to repeat itself.

And yet, the collection is hopeful, tackling the difficult subjects, but “always holding joy in the other hand,” Smith said.

In another poem from the collection, “dinosaurs in the hood,” Smith’s version of imagined justice comes in the form of a rousing neighborhood of heroes: grannies shoot raptors from the porch and Academy Award-winning actress Viola Davis takes out predators with an afro pick.

No bullets in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills
the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. Besides, the only reason
I want to make this is for that first scene anyway: the little black boy
on the bus with a toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless

his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.

“All things and poems are about balance,” they said. “A poem is small enough, but also mighty enough to hold many things at one time.”

Continue to read Smith's poem "summer, somewhere" at PBS NewsHour.