{"product_id":"9781555974497","title":"Blue Front","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA stunning account of racism, mob violence, and cultural responsibility as rendered by the poet Martha Collins\u003c\/b\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003ethe victim hanged, though not on a tree, this \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ewas not the country, they used a steel arch\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ewith electric lights, and later a lamppost, this\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ewas a modern event, the trees were not involved.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e—from \"Blue Front\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMartha Collins's father, as a five-year-old, sold fruit outside the Blue Front Restaurant in Cairo, Illinois, in 1909. What he witnessed there, with 10,000 participants, is shocking.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eBlue Front\u003c\/i\u003e, Collins describes the brutal lynching of a black man and, as an afterthought, a white man, both of them left to the mercilessness of the spectators. The poems patch together an arresting array of evidence—newspaper articles, census data, legal history, postcards, photographs, and Collins's speculations about her father's own experience. The resulting work, part lyric and part narrative, is a bold investigation into hate, mob mentality, culpability, and what it means to be white in a country still haunted by its violently racist history.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Graywolf Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47056648601840,"sku":"9781555974497","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781555974497_p0.jpg?v=1769899101","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781555974497","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}