Morning Breaks In The Elevator

Six years after his last solo publication, Rebel Without Applause, Lemn Sissay brings together the experiences of those intervening years in this new collection.

On August 7, 1970, a revolt by Black prisoners in a Marin County courthouse stunned the nation. In its aftermath, Angela Davis, an African American activist-scholar who had campaigned vigorously for prisoners' rights, was placed on the FBI's "ten most wanted list." Captured in New York City two months later, she was charged with murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. Her trial, chronicled in this "compelling tale" (Publishers Weekly), brought strong public indictment. The Morning Breaks is a riveting firsthand account of Davis's ordeal and her ultimate triumph, written by an activist in the student, civil rights, and antiwar movements who was intimately involved in the struggle for her release. First published in 1975, and praised by The Nation for its "graphic narrative of [Davis's] legal and public fight," The Morning Breaks remains relevant today as the nation contends with the political fallout of the Sixties and the grim consequences of institutional racism. For this edition, Bettina Aptheker has provided an introduction that revisits crucial events of the late 1960s and early 1970s and puts Davis's case into the context of that time and our own—from the killings at Kent State and Jackson State to the politics of the prison system today. This book gives a first-hand account of the worldwide movement for Angela Davis's freedom and of her trial. It offers a unique historical perspective on the case and its continuing significance in the contemporary political landscape.

This book is the first ever collection about twenty-first century genre fiction. It offers accessible yet rigorous critical interventions in a growing field of popular culture and academic study, presenting new genres as a fascinating and powerful means of reading contemporary culture. The collection explores the history and uses of genre to date, analyses key examples of innovations and developments in the field and reflects on how these texts have been mobilised in teaching since the year 2000. It explores a range of new twenty-first century genres through a close reading of key examples, along with a broader critical overview at the beginning of each chapter capturing wider developments, contexts and themes. As a result of this contextual, text-orientated approach, the book promotes a broad appeal beyond the specifics of new genres and authors, and will contribute to a wider understanding of developments in post-millennial fictions.

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR A SAINSBURY'S MAGAZINE BOOK TO GIFT For the past decade, Lemn Sissay has composed a short poem as dawn breaks each morning. Life-affirming, witty and full of wonder, these poems chronicle his own battle with the dark and are fuelled by resilience and defiant joy. Let the Light Pour In is a collection of the best of these poems, and a book celebrating this morning practice. ‘How do you do it?’ said night ‘How do you wake up and shine?’ ‘I keep it simple,’ said light ‘One day at a time’

Lemn Sissay was seventeen when he wrote his first poetry book, which he hand-sold to the miners and millworkers of Wigan. Since then his poems have become landmarks, sculpted in granite and built from concrete, recorded on era-defining albums and declaimed in over thirty countries. He has performed to thousands of football fans at the FA Cup Final, to hundreds of thousands as the poet of the London Olympics, and to millions across our TV screens and the airwaves of BBC Radio. He has become one of the nation's best-loved voices.

Something Dark tells the true story of Lemn Sissay who as a baby was given up by his Ethiopian mother in the 1960s. He was renamed Norman Greenwood and nicknamed Chalky White throughout his turbulent childhood in care, only to find out his real name at the age of 18. No longer the possession of the social services, he left the brutal suburbs of Lancashire for the bright lights of Manchester where he became a celebrated performance poet. Aged 21 Lemn left for Gambia in search of his mother and the truth about his father.

“An intense snapshot of the chain reaction caused by pulling a trigger.” —Booklist (starred review) “Astonishing.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “A tour de force.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) A Newbery Honor Book A Coretta Scott King Honor Book A Printz Honor Book A Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Winner for Young Adult Literature Longlisted for the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature Winner of the Walter Dean Myers Award An Edgar Award Winner for Best Young Adult Fiction Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner An Entertainment Weekly Best YA Book of 2017 A Vulture Best YA Book of 2017 A Buzzfeed Best YA Book of 2017 An ode to Put the Damn Guns Down, this is New York Times bestselling author Jason Reynolds’s electrifying novel that takes place in sixty potent seconds—the time it takes a kid to decide whether or not he’s going to murder the guy who killed his brother. A cannon. A strap. A piece. A biscuit. A burner. A heater. A chopper. A gat. A hammer A tool for RULE Or, you can call it a gun. That’s what fifteen-year-old Will has shoved in the back waistband of his jeans. See, his brother Shawn was just murdered. And Will knows the rules. No crying. No snitching. Revenge. That’s where Will’s now heading, with that gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, the gun that was his brother’s gun. He gets on the elevator, seventh floor, stoked. He knows who he’s after. Or does he? As the elevator stops on the sixth floor, on comes Buck. Buck, Will finds out, is who gave Shawn the gun before Will took the gun. Buck tells Will to check that the gun is even loaded. And that’s when Will sees that one bullet is missing. And the only one who could have fired Shawn’s gun was Shawn. Huh. Will didn’t know that Shawn had ever actually USED his gun. Bigger huh. BUCK IS DEAD. But Buck’s in the elevator? Just as Will’s trying to think this through, the door to the next floor opens. A teenage girl gets on, waves away the smoke from Dead Buck’s cigarette. Will doesn’t know her, but she knew him. Knew. When they were eight. And stray bullets had cut through the playground, and Will had tried to cover her, but she was hit anyway, and so what she wants to know, on that fifth floor elevator stop, is, what if Will, Will with the gun shoved in the back waistband of his jeans, MISSES. And so it goes, the whole long way down, as the elevator stops on each floor, and at each stop someone connected to his brother gets on to give Will a piece to a bigger story than the one he thinks he knows. A story that might never know an END…if Will gets off that elevator. Told in short, fierce staccato narrative verse, Long Way Down is a fast and furious, dazzlingly brilliant look at teenage gun violence, as could only be told by Jason Reynolds.