A Letter of Resignation Book Coverclick to enlarge

Cover design & Cover art: “We Believed These Truths” by Enzo Silon Surin

A Letter of Resignation

by Enzo Silon Surin

$11.00
5 x 7 | 50 pages | Poetry
ISBN 978-1-941604-04-5

Publication Date: April 2017

A LETTER OF RESIGNATION is a meditation on American history informed by the Black experience in the United States and neighboring island republics. This musically-infused libretto is addressed to History as a Republic, in which certain moments and individuals have been vetted and elected to convey a message that consistently denigrates more than it celebrates what it is to be American Black. Part Blues, part Jazz, part Hip-Hop, this book-length poem is a sound declaration from a tired, fed-up and "woke" generation.

 

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about the author


photo credit: Kenny Chung

Enzo Silon Surin is a Haitian-born poet, educator, publisher and social advocate and the author of the chapbooks, A Letter of Resignation: An American Libretto (2017) and Higher Ground (2006). His poems have appeared in Transition Magazine/Jalada, Interviewing the Caribbean, Pangyrus, jubilat, Soundings East, The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop, sx salon and Tidal Basin Review, among others. Surin is the recipient of a 2017 Brother Thomas Fellowship from The Boston Foundation and is a PEN New England Celebrated New Voice in Poetry. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University and is currently Associate Professor of English at Bunker Hill Community College. For more, visit enzosurinink.org

 

 

PRAISES FOR A LETTER OF RESIGNATION

“In A Letter of Resignation, Enzo Silon Surin has crafted a poetic composition that laments both the historic and contemporary ‘matterless’ nature of black lives in America. It is a masterpiece. Much like James Baldwin before him, Surin’s gripping work is equal parts a catalog of black suffering and a bold declaration of independence from the tyranny of racism. In a time in the United States when injustice is a bully with a Goliath-like roar, Surin answers back with poetic stones of resistance. That act of courage is nothing to take lightly. Neither is this superbly written book.” -Truth Thomas, Author of SPEAK WATER

 

“Inspired by such heroic voices as Martinique’s Aimé Césaire, Enzo Silon Surin brings his Haitian roots to bear on the landscape of America in an epic sweep of incantatory rhythms evoking the enduring spirit of the African Diaspora. The immediacy of his poetry is grounded in his sense of history, as twenty-first century black immigrants come to the U.S. to negotiate race and culture. They are the new African Americans whose histories now meet that of the first African Americans in a hybridity that goes unarticulated until we see this kind of poetry. A Letter of Resignation is a remarkable feat.” -Afaa Michael Weaver, Author of SPIRIT BOXING