BLACK FOLK COULD FLY

Stirring, deeply thought-through essays and letters on topics ranging from sexuality and racism to foodways and the sense of place.

“You were born rich in identity—Black, Southern, Queer. Don’t ever let anybody tell you any bit of it is a burden.” So writes Kenan (1963-2020), author of If I Had Two Wings, in a letter to his younger self, imparting lessons born of decades of self-awareness. The author knows all too well the oppression and indignities borne by Black people in America. As a bookish boy in the sports-obsessed South with a dawning awareness of his sexual identity, he knew early on that his future lay elsewhere. Consequently, he moved to New York to work in publishing and academia. Yet, this anthology makes clear that he never forgot his home, and he would return south to teach English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina. He writes with an exquisitely tuned ear about the blues, the folk music of the oppressed. In a long essay on racism that merits a place on high school and college required reading lists henceforth, he recounts injuries large and small: being singled out as the only Black person at a college frat party, being rousted by the police for no reason. For all that, he writes, he never felt ashamed of being Black. Even as Kenan asserts that the color of the future will be a rainbow, not Black or White, he writes with deep intelligence and a discerning palate about the one thing that perhaps shapes Southern Black culture most definitively: its food, picked fresh from overflowing gardens, cooked to perfection, and served up on groaning boards to enjoy in good company. “Mama’s ingenuity and resolve and green thumb made us wealthy when it came to nourishment….As boy, I took all the work and time and energy to accomplish all this bounty for granted; now I look back in wonder,” he writes. Tayari Jones provides the introduction.

A superb introduction to a writer deserving much greater recognition.