How do the generation of Black Americans who grew up in the past 25 years reckon with the tragedies that play out in their daily lives? And how do these forces shape them and their worldviews? In her new book, 

 (Grand Central Publishing), poet, educator, and scholar 

—who currently serves as the president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the largest humanities philanthropy in the United States (and who was the guest on 

)—explores these questions, and others, by meditating on race, class, trauma, justice, and memory, and their influences on contemporary creativity. At this vital point in time and American culture, Alexander—a Black woman, mother, auntie, and lifelong teacher—positions art in her writing as a powerful means for understanding and self-expression, and for radically illuminating the country’s racism and racial violence.

Organized into three parts, with multiple essays in each, the book reveals how Alexander thinks about the contemporary lives of young Black Americans, and about the history of violence and grief knitted into the tapestry of the Black American experience. Interwoven with her writing are explications on pieces of music that speak to this cultural moment and act as protest songs—including Flying Lotus’s 

 (2015)—as well as works from a range of artists, including Carrie Mae Weems, Kerry James Marshall, Amy Sherald, and Kara Walker. These images act as visual beacons to Alexander’s prose, not illustrating her words, but illuminating them. Part I, for example, begins with a detail of Lorna Simpson’s “Thin Bands” (2019), a desolate black-and-blue abstract screenprint whose tenor runs through the book’s assertive beginning.

Part II, the book’s title chapter, originally appeared as 

 in the midst of the civil unrest in June 2020 following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. (The piece later received a National Magazine Award.) In it, Alexander calls the young people who grew up in the past 25 years “the Trayvon Generation”—a reference to 17-year-old Trayvon Martin’s untimely death, in 2012, and the ensuing cultural moment that ignited a movement and ushered in a wave of activism against police brutality. It’s an age group, she writes, marked by the very public deaths of Black Americans, and also the weight of history that came before them. Alexander’s two teenage sons are part of this generation, and in this piece she writes to them, for them, and about them. Its opening paragraph—preceded by “Martina and Rhonda” (1993), a series of large-format Polaroids of two young Black women, taken by photographer Dawoud Bey, that nods toward the vulnerability of Black youth—offers a gut-wrenching review of those we have witnessed murdered: “This one was shot in his grandmother’s yard. This one was carrying a bag of Skittles. This one was playing with a toy gun in front of a gazebo. Black girl in bright bikini. Black boy holding cell phone. This one danced like a marionette as he was shot down in a Chicago intersection.”

Alexander describes the fear of keeping Black boys grounded and alive at a time when witnessing Black death is just a click away on our smartphones (and appears, over and over again, via videos that are often seen out of context), and when Black life is constantly threatened by forces outside of her control—in one incident she describes, her community’s block watch in New Haven, Connecticut, praised neighbors for calling the police on two Black kids riding bicycles. Throughout, Alexander considers how Black youth are finding resilience and strength in a moment when they are constantly faced with traumatizing displays of the fragility of Black life, and how Black Americans move not to forget, but to 

Elsewhere, Alexander provides lyrical contemplations on subjects both broad and specific, including dance, poetry, Confederate monuments, and coming face to face with racist imagery on the campus of Yale University, where she was a professor and department chair for 15 years, until 2016. Taken together, the essays that shape 

 provide a space for Alexander to begin a dialogue that artfully steps backward and forward through time, reflecting on how society has changed, and the spaces where growth is still urgently needed.

Elizabeth Alexander Explores the Grief, Gratitude, and Creativity of the “Trayvon Generation”

To speak with self-described “citizen artist” 

 about her creative practice is to talk with her about art as a means of revitalization and protection. Particularly for the Black community.

The self-taught sculptor, poet, and performer lives and works in the Homewood neighborhood of Pittsburgh, a predominantly African American area that has long struggled with poverty and gun violence. There, she handcrafts sculptures out of locally found objects that she embellishes with materials including beads, glass, fabric, and wood to create what she calls “power figures”: large, often human-shaped forms that draw inspiration from the Kongo people’s 

, protective charms believed to hold spiritual energy. Through these forms, german offers gateways to collective healing, and confronts the historical and day-to-day forces of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, and misogynoir.

german’s output extends out of her ongoing activism. In 2011, after moving her studio outside of her home, her new space began to regularly attract young, curious onlookers, whom german in turn gave art materials and encouraged to make works of their own. From there, she founded Love Front Porch, an art-making initiative for Homewood’s women, children, and families. Three years after that, the effort became part of ARTHouse, a grassroots community center german created where anyone can visit and create. “I’m literally watching people around me wake back up to their creative capacity,” she says. “Every work of art that I make has work to do.”

The insights and energy german receives from the community around her play a crucial role in her own art-making, and helped inform her new body of work filling the Kasmin gallery booth at this week’s 

 (May 5–8) in New York City. The sculptures, which are presented in dialogue with pieces from german’s 2021 series 

The Artist Channels 33 Intimate Technologies of Soul,” explore the physical and metaphysical phenomena that can affect the heart. Less tangible items appear in the long, unconventional list of materials that comprise each piece. One figure, titled “Love Poem for Lil Kim” (2022), for example, combines pink tennis shoe key rings and bamboo earrings with “shame and its opposite,” “love and resistance,” and “the death of several of your friends and no real way to process it in the public.”

For those who come in contact with them, german wants her sculptures to encourage self-awareness. Often, she has watched people interact with her figures through personal memories—a lard can or an old radio can speak to them, awakening something inside, and opening doors to curiosity and an expansion of the mind. “I’m interested not necessarily in what people think about my work, but in what they 

 when they’re in proximity to it,” she says. “I’m interested in the feeling languages and technologies that people experience, because that’s how the work is active for me.”

The artist’s frequent use of mirrors and shoes make it easy for viewers to see themselves in her work, and to identify with the individual pieces that give each figure life. One recent sculpture, “Black Girl on Skateboard Going Where She’s Got to Go to Do What She’s Got To Do and It Might Not Have Anything to Do With You, Ever” (2022), consists of a full-bodied Black child in the midst of skating, with her left arm outstretched for balance and her braids trailing behind her. “The form recognizes the engine of joy, the engine of deciding for oneself to own,” german says, “and to live, and to 

, within the heart and the language of your own joy.” Like all of her figures, it exists to help us center ourselves back into consciousness.

vanessa german’s Collaged Sculptures Are Ornate Icons of Healing and Protection

Chanice is a poet, Capricorn, and music enthusiast based in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in 

, and other publications. You can find her online at 

Chanice Hughes-Greenberg

Chanice Hughes-Greenberg’s Articles

Elizabeth Alexander Explores the Grief, Gratitude, and Creativity of the “Trayvon Generation”

vanessa german’s Collaged Sculptures Are Ornate Icons of Healing and Protection