Watchnight

By Cyrée Jarelle Johnson

Book Overview

WINNER OF THE JAMES LAUGHLIN AWARD
WINNER OF THE KENNY FRIES DISABLED WRITER LITERARY AWARD

In WATCHNIGHT, we accompany Johnson's unnamed protagonist on a psychedelic quest across myriad forms, places, and times marked by climate crisis, exodus, and Black trans identity-making.

In exhilarating lyric poems and chiseled prose blocks, Cyr e Jarelle Johnson charts the history of his family alongside the history of Watchnight--a churchy holiday of messianic tarrying--and steps through portals to render the human faces of American internal migration and mass displacement--from countryside to city and back again. Spanning from 1803 to a near-future rife with class tension and racial anxiety, WATCHNIGHT is a study of Black bonds, Black grief, and Black flight.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1643621947
• ISBN13: 9781643621944
• Release Date: April 2024
• Publisher: Nightboat Books
• Length: 104 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.9" x 8.9"