NPR Asks Kwame Alexander About Light for the World to See: A Thousand Words on Race and Hope

On Morning Edition, Rachel Martin asks Kwame Alexander about his new book of poetry, Light for the World to See: A Thousand Words on Race and Hope (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), which considers Colin Kaepernick's kneeling protests before NFL games and the election of Barack Obama as president, among other things. In conversation with Martin, Alexander says, "I think the weight of being Black was too much to carry for me for a long time." Reading on from there: 

I didn't know how to find answers to assert myself to do something. And then a friend of mine sent me a quote by Toni Morrison that said this is precisely the time when artists go to work. There's no time for despair. No place for self pity. No need for silence. No room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language, that is how civilizations heal. And so I wrote. I used my words to scream, to shout, to sort of lift up my voice to shine a little light for the world.

I wanted to write this as a reminder to Black children and families to remember their humanity. I wanted to write it as sort of a wake-up call to white Americans to acknowledge and know the truth, to fight against a proclivity to maintain the hierarchy, whether conscious or not. I think of these poems as sort of negro spirituals in a way — which are timeless in their comfort and their guidance and their roots in praise houses and ring shouts and other informal gatherings of enslaved Africans who needed to express their sorrows and their hopes, wading in the water. Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Steal away to Jesus. That's what these poems are for me. They are psalms and balms for my soul and hopefully for our souls so that we can get on with the business of making the world a better place.

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