In this provocative book, sixteen of Minnesota's best writers provide a range of perspectives on what it is like to live as a person of color in Minnesota. They give readers a splendid gift: the gift of touching another human being's inner reality, behind masks and veils and politeness. They bring us generously into experiences that we must understand if we are to come together in real relationships.
Minnesota communities struggle with some of the nation's worst racial disparities. As its authors confront and consider the realities that lie beneath the numbers, this book provides an important tool to those who want to be part of closing those gaps.
With contributions by:
Taiyon J. Coleman, Heid E. Erdrich, Venessa Fuentes, Shannon Gibney, David Grant, Carolyn Holbrook, IBé, Andrea Jenkins, Robert Karimi, JaeRan Kim, Sherry Quan Lee, David Mura, Bao Phi, Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria, Diane Wilson, and Kao Kalia Yang
Although her first dream was to be a backup dancer for former hip-hop artist Heavy D, Taiyon J Coleman is a writer, educator and consultant, and her writing has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. Currently completing her first novel, Chicago @ 15, Taiyon lives in Minneapolis with her family.
Heid E. Erdrich is Ojibwe, enrolled at Turtle Mountain. She is author of four collections of poetry and co-editor of Sister Nations: Native American Writers on Community. Her most recent book is Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories, and Recipes from the Upper Midwest. She mentors MFA students at Augsburg College.
Venessa Fuentes is from the Twin Cities. She is also from its arts, queer, and POC communities. Her writing has been anthologized, read at poetry picnics, shared at the dinner table, and turned into public art. Along with her son and her wife, Venessa claims the south side of Minneapolis as Home.<E/>
Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and the author of See No Color, a young adult novel. Her writing has appeared in Al Jazeera America, The Crisis, Gawker, and other venues. A Bush Artist and McKnight Writing Fellow, she lives with her husband and children in Minneapolis.
David Lawrence Grant has written drama for the stage, film, and television, as well as fiction and memoir. He has written major reports on racial bias in the justice system for the Minnesota Supreme Court and on racial disparities in the health care system for the Minnesota legislature. He teaches screenwriting at Independent Filmmaker Project/Minnesota.
Carolyn Holbrook, recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative grant and the Minnesota Book Awards’ Kay Sexton Award, is the author of Ordinary People, Extraordinary Journeys and the founder of SASE: The Write Place (now merged with Intermedia Arts).
IBé is many things, and they all orbit around being father to his son and daughters. He lives in the Middle of the Atlantic, hoping his children make it to America (without leaving Africa behind). He writes poetry and passes it off as spoken word. Or maybe it is the other way around.<E/>
Andrea Jenkins, Intermedia Arts board chair and Bush Fellow, is a writer, performer, educator, and activist. A locally and nationally recognized poet, she has earned many awards, fellowships, and commissions. She is an oral historian at the Tretter Collection at the University of Minnesota Archives.
Robert Farid Karimi is an award-winning interdisciplinary playwright, experience designer and poet whose interactive performances feed audiences a mixed bowl of humor, pop culture, and personal history. A National Poetry Slam Champion, he has appeared in a variety of eclectic venues worldwide. His work has been published and recorded internationally.
JaeRan Kim is assistant professor at University of Washington Tacoma. JaeRan’s writing and scholarship focuses on the intersections of race, disability, gender, and kinship on vulnerable children and families.
Sherry Quan Lee approaches writing as a community resource and as culturally based art of an ordinary everyday practical aesthetic. Her most recent book, Love Imagined: a mixed race memoir, was a 2015 Minnesota Book Award finalist.
David Mura has written two memoirs: Turning Japanese, a Josephine Miles Book Award/Oakland PEN winner and a New York Times Notable Book, and Where the Body Meets Memory. His novel is Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire. He’s written four books of poetry, including The Last Incantations.
Bao Phi was born in Saigon and raised in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis. He has been a performance poet and has struggled to contribute to social justice movements since he was a teenager. He is grateful to the many artists and community organizers who have influenced him.
Rodrigo Sanchez-Chavarria is a writer and spoken word poet of Peruvian heritage involved with Palabristas, a Minnesota-based Latin@ poets collective. He is an MFA student at Hamline University and writes about fatherhood, the duality of two cultures in English, Spanglish and Spanish, and issues pertaining to his community.<E/>
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer and the author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir, published in 2008 by Coffee House Press, and The Song Poet, published in 2016 by Metropolitan Books.
Diane Wilson (Dakota) has published a memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read selection, and a nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life. Wilson is a 2013 Bush Foundation Fellow and Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, a non-profit farm.
