Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era is an edited collection of critical essays and poetry that investigates contemporary elegy within the black diaspora.

Revisiting the Elegy in the Black Lives Matter Era is an edited collection of critical essays and poetry that investigates contemporary elegy within the black diaspora. Scores of contemporary writers have turned to elegiac poetry and prose in order to militate against the white supremacist logic that has led to recent deaths of unarmed black men, women, and children. This volume combines scholarly and creative understandings of the elegy in order to discern how mourning feeds our political awareness in this dystopian time as writers attempt to see, hear, and say something in relation to the bodies of the dead as well as to living readers. Moreover, this book provides a model for how to productively interweave theoretical and deeply personal accounts to encourage discussions about art and activism that transgress disciplinary boundaries, as well as lines of race, gender, class, and nation.

Not since the murder of Emmett Till has Black America been so utterly moved by the murder of Trayvon Martin. This collection represents our collective anger and mourning for the erasure of all Black bodies - known and unknown, past and future. These are elegies not just for the dead, but an elegy for the American promise. --Dr. Dolores V. Sisco - American Studies Youngstown State University This collection will be a valuable resource in studying African American literature along with the Black Lives Matters movement. -- Cedric Burrows, Marquette University