The People Can Fly - by Joshua Bennett (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"The People Can Fly will levitate your mind and enrich your soul." --Lena Waithe

What does it mean to be deemed promising, gifted, in an unjust world? The award-winning poet and MIT Distinguished Chair of the Humanities interrogates this question--and offers a more expansive vision of giftedness--in this striking, original work.

What does promise cost in America? Especially when that promise is seen as grounds to separate us from the communities we cherish, and framed as the key to success, salvation, survival? In The People Can Fly, Dr. Joshua Bennett explores the complex position of black prodigies in a society that has, all too often, defined blackness as absence, as lack of intellect or inner life.

Through this hybrid work of memoir and cultural history, Dr. Bennett shares how his own academic journey reflected the ebb and flow of being seen as both promising and as a problem. He turns to the childhood archives of Malcolm X, Stevie Wonder, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, and others to further explore this theme: highlighting the role of cultural institutions, and loving communities, in shaping the lives of leading lights within African American culture. What's more, Dr. Bennett clarifies how these spaces--these mentors, teachers, friends, and kin--helped defend young people from a world that sought to exclude them from its vision of promise and possibility.

With stunning prose and grace, The People Can Fly is an urgent reflection on what it means to be gifted, and to give one's gifts away, in the present day. It is a praise song for generations of black dreamers who dared to imagine another world--where miracles abound, and ascension is only the beginning.

Review Quotes

Praise for Joshua Bennett:

"The People Can Fly is a celebration of Black brilliance and the truth that we rise highest when we rise together. By reminding us that our culture is not just survival, but genius, joy, and possibility, Bennett cements his legacy as a brilliant writer and a guiding light for our world."--Anna Malaika Tubbs, New York Times bestselling author of The Three Mothers and Erased

"A tender celebration of vulnerability and the strength that blooms quietly in its presence."--The Atlantic

"At a moment in American culture punctuated to a heartbreaking degree by acts of hatred, violence and disregard... Joshua Bennett's astounding, dolorous, rejoicing voice is indispensable."--Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Free the Captives

"Bennett renders this lush history in lively, captivating prose, smoothly transporting us back to the city blocks, bars, cafes and stages these artists traversed and inhabited. Perhaps most endearingly, and what makes this book shine with a refreshing dynamism, is that this history is also his own."--Tas Tobey, New York Times

"Don't miss this superb laying bare of Black joy and genius!"--Dr. Cornel West, American philosopher and author of the national bestseller Race Matters

"I am emboldened and sharpened by Bennett's genius and by his love made plain across each of these shimmering pages."--Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria

"Joshua Bennett knows his life's purpose is to teach--and that's exactly what he does with The People Can Fly. This book will levitate your mind and enrich your soul. The text doesn't follow rules or pacify the reader. Bennett's poetic nature shines through on every page. Not only is it a joy to read, but it's an honor to be taught by one of the most prolific professors on the planet. This book is a masterclass in literature and a necessary reminder to cherish the child in all of us."--Lena Waithe, Emmy Award-winning actor, producer, and screenwriter

"With a singularly expansive and compassionate view of history, Bennett sweeps across generations of joy, suffering, and connection."--Lit Hub

About the Author

Dr. Joshua Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)--which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award. He is also the author of Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020), Owed (Penguin, 2020), The Study of Human Life (Penguin, 2022), and Spoken Word: A Cultural History (Knopf, 2023). He has received fellowships and awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. He is a Professor of Literature and Distinguished Chair of the Humanities at MIT.