A Year in Reading: Kevin Young
After finishing research for my book , which took up most of my reading over the past several years, two of my favorite books I read, which brings the poet to life as well as her struggles, and , the great collection of stories and “interiors” by filmmaker and writer . Collins was a pioneering black woman film director who died at the age of 46; these stories were uncovered by her daughter and published last year. The fact that Collins’s archives now reside at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, where I serve as director, reminds me how powerful it is to see work in its original, manuscript form. Archives are also the raw stuff of a biography like Bishop’s, for which did groundbreaking research. Both these books make us rethink these women writers and restore them to the center of our cultural conversation.
