AFter tHe HuRricAnE

← EarlierMacro Timeline

2008 - 2020

2009

We encounter each other in words, words
spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed,
words to consider, or reconsider.

“Praise Song for the Day”
Elizabeth Alexander, 2009

I wish I glowed like a brown-skinned pregnant woman.

“Lighthead's Guide to the Galaxy”
Terrance Hayes, 2010
2010
Natasha Trethewey is named United States Poet Laureate.
2012

At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,
a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns.


“Incident”
Natasha Trethewey, 2006

i am a woman carrying other women in my mouth
behold a sister, a daughter, a mother, a dear friend.


#sayhername
Aja Monet, 2017
2013
Founded in 2013, the Black Lives Matter movement leads a new generation of activism against ongoing police brutality, racism, and inequality.
Ferguson, Missouri, August 2014: Tear gas rains down on a woman kneeling in the street after a demonstration over the killing of teenager Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer earlier that month.
In response to the police killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, and across the country take to the streets to protest police brutality and racial discrimination. The turmoil inspires Major Jackson’s 2016 “Ferguson.”
2014

Once there was a boy who thought it a noble idea to lie down in the middle of the street and sleep.

“Ferguson”
Major Jackson, March 2, 2016

And in this night that is not night,
Each word is a wish, each phrase
A shape their bodies ache to fill--


“Duende”
Tracy K. Smith, 2007
2017