Boneyarn

Poetry. "David Mills' BONEYARN, about New York's African Burial Ground--America's oldest and largest slave cemetery--conducts a heart wrenching yet historically meticulous excavation of America's contradictory allegiance to freedom and slavery, equality and racial hatred. Whether speaking about or through the voices of nameless servants or chimney sweeps, Mills combines a novelist's love of character with a poet's pitch perfect ear for idiom and eye for unforgettable detail. The imagination at work in this remarkable book is humane, unflinching, erudite and utterly moving. In its wide range of styles and voices--its empathy and outrage--BONEYARN is a profoundly American work that enlightens and chastens, laments and affirms or finds in lamentation a complicated form of affirmation. A marvelous achievement."--Alan Shapiro