TRAVELING WITHOUT MOVING

A Minnesota-based Black professor reflects on the ways race has shaped her life.

Coleman, a professor of English and women’s studies, grew up on Chicago’s South Side with a single mother of five children who “died prematurely” at the age of 49. The first in her family to go to college and then graduate school, the author was thrilled to find a job teaching composition to college students. Throughout her journey, Coleman’s race and gender have influenced the way she moves through institutions ranging from academia to her family. Whether being told to accept hurtful slurs in a course designed to prepare her to teach composition, coping with racist medical care that led to preventable pregnancy loss, or learning how to connect with Liberian refugees in her first teaching job, racism has pervaded every aspect of Coleman’s life. Even this essay collection represents a triumph over her family’s assumptions that “writing and being a writer would be an extremely challenging thing for a poor Black girl from Chicago to do and be.” The author shows how she has surmounted these obstacles systematically. “Overcoming my negative writing experiences is a daily practice of consistent writing and self-love through individual work and ef­fort and community,” she writes. “The rules for my craft are simple: just read and write when and where you can about what you want.” The result of her diligent work is this ebullient, insightful, frank, and humorous essay collection suffused with a joyful defiance; ultimately, it reads like a well-deserved celebration of Coleman’s many personal and professional triumphs. At times, the collection lacks cohesion—some essays slip into an academic register that jolts readers out of the otherwise eloquently conversational text, but overall, this is a sharp, worthy read.

A Black professor’s compulsively readable book of essays about her encounters with racism.