NPR Best Books of 2019
Chicago Tribune Best Books of 2019
Chicago Review of Books Best Poetry Book of 2019
O Magazine Best Books by Women of Summer 2019
The Millions Must-Read Poetry of June 2019
LitHub Most Anticipated Reads of Summer 2019
“The genre-busting poet/scholar behind Electric Arches and Ghosts in the Schoolyard combines assiduously researched facts and bracing lyricism in this elegiac exploration of the 1919 Chicago race riot and the “summer-song folk” who were its human cost.”
—O Magazine
“Eve Ewing is a poet of limitless possibility. She seems to get sharper and more daring with each book.”
—Poetry Magazine
“A mixture of grand voices, hushed laments, and ardent dreams, 1919 resurrects forgotten history.”
—The Millions
“Via a variety of poetic forms — erasure, Golden Shovel, haibun — Ewing evocatively shows, rather than tells, the ways in which history repeats itself. 1919 is thoughtfully spare, accommodating questions and blank space. Through this economy of language, Ewing — who also co-penned a play about poet Gwendolyn Brooks and writes a Marvel comic series — invites readers into a conversation.”
—Chicago Tribune
“These clarion and haunting poems—some psalm-like, others percussive, even concussive, all technically brilliant and sure to galvanize adults and teens alike—incisively and resoundingly evoke the promise and betrayal of the Great Migration and the everyday struggles of Chicago’s Black community against vicious and violent racism. The riot a century ago, Ewing writes, ‘left an indelible mark on the city,’ which she gracefully, imaginatively, and searingly illuminates with hope for a more just future.”
—Booklist Starred Review
“The poems in 1919 ask how far we’ve come, and question ideas of progress and of thriving and surviving. On the centenary of the Red Summer, in an America hardly less violent and anti-black, Ewing wields a kaleidoscopic Afrofuturist style to illuminate a crucial piece of history and to imagine a path forward.”
—LitHub
“Ewing blends past, present, and future, imagining the stories of those who lived through the riot and beyond, and inquiring into its lasting consequences.”
—Buzzfeed
“Flecked with historical photos and evocative quotes from a post-riot commission report, filled with biblical and mythological references, seamlessly bending time and genre, 1919 is an unforgettable conversation-starter. Every poem leaves a bruise.”
—Longreads
“Eve Ewing’s 1919 is a window into the mental and emotional lives of Black Americans in a Chicago, in an America, where time beckons oppressively. Exodus and deliverance to a promised land? The eternal return of racist violence? Time lends haunted hope. Maybe circular time, the eternal return, could cease and turn linear, toward exodus and deliverance. 1919 places readers in the minds and bodies of Black Chicagoans, Black Americans, and asks readers to see what has been, and what could be.”
—Vice
“These poems are crafted and tense, inventive and full of energy.”
—The Rumpus
“Through personal creation, historical research, cultural connection, and an uncanny natural rhythm of time folding in on itself, Ewing manages to capture the people’s stories and the devastating race riots with a fluid touch of hope, excitement, understanding, and an abiding sense of grief.”
—Third Coast Review
“We can’t recommend this book highly enough.”
—Zinn Education Project
“Equal parts poetry collection and sweeping historical narrative, 1919 has the feel of an instant classic.”
—Danny Caine, Raven Bookstore
