NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

A photo-rich anthology of work decrying racial inequities and violence against Black Americans.

Each of the pieces, many previously published elsewhere, are by a different writer. In his introduction, Baltimore-based photographer Allen, whose photos interweave with those of famed civil rights–era photographer Parks, explains his motivation for this book: “Black people in American must control our narrative. We must document the times we live in—through protest, photography, and words.” Collectively, these brief pieces resonate with blistering rage, grief, and urgent appeals. DeRay Mckesson explains, “There will never be peace—not in our hearts, not in the streets—without justice for those who have paid the ultimate price of police brutality.” Lawrence Burney remembers George Floyd: “It is important to share these caring snapshots because they underline that Black people are entitled to a sense of individuality, something that many white Americans (cops or otherwise) repeatedly fail to understand.” Dominique Christina offers a searing poem that includes these lines: “We gon’ always fight and / Be in our magic / We gon’ bury our dead and / Sing what songs we know / We gon’ be what you’re afraid of. / We gon’ be what you’re afraid of.” In “Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man,” Emmanuel Acho writes, “The words we use matter, and I want to focus on four of them here: protest, riot, rebellion, and massacre. When it comes to the fight against racism in this country, an ongoing question has been who gets to decide which is which, and then how they get to enforce those decisions.” The book is interspersed with quotations from Black scholars, such as Audre Lorde and Fred Hampton, and the many pages of Parks’ photographs, mostly of protests, are striking. American photographer Jamel Shabazz provides the foreword, and other contributors include D. Watkins, Clint Smith, Ruby Hamad, and Jacqueline Woodson.

An urgent, intense collection worth buying for the photos alone.