Alive At the End of the World
By Rashauna Herm
Recommended reading age: 17 & up
“With time, the white boys with guns will become wounds we won’t quite remember enduring. ‘How did you get that scar on your shoulder?’ ‘Oh, a boy I barely knew was sad once.’”
Saeed Jones provides a striking collection of poetry that will dwell in your mind long after you finish it, in the best way possible. In Alive at the End of the World, Jones takes hard-hitting topics like violence, systemic racism, and white supremacy and intertwines them with his own autobiographical experiences, as well as shouting out various Black icons, including Little Richard, Diahann Carroll and Toni Morrison.
Alive at the End of the World evaluates the existence of various groups, during the “end of the world” and highlights the specific pain that affects those groups. The paradoxical nature of this premise is not lost on Jones, who presents the end of the world — not as an apocalyptic end — but as a traumatized state that our culture is stuck in from viewing the horrors of violence presented to us through modern technology. Jones brings attention to how constant grief and stress from observing war torn countries, massacred villages, or daily mass shootings here in the US can seem more impending than the actual apocalypse. Oftentimes, it seems as if the media is preoccupied with presenting us with nothing but pain every day, and we are expected to simply move past the emotional dread it instills in us. We are expected to ignore history, even as it repeats itself. Things in our culture seem normal because they are routine, but Jones ushers his readers toward the realization that the end of the world is here — and we have been comfortably living with the apocalypse already, whether we accept it or not.
In this body of work, Jones interrogates himself, reflecting on a question once asked by a reader, “Do you think you need your pain in order to write?” Grief and how he deals with it is a common topic in Jones’ writing — especially his convoluted relationship with his mother. In the Black community, there’s a sort of taboo against using pain or trauma as influence for art, specifically if your trauma comes from a family figure. I applaud Jones for his tenacious honesty, his brutal humor and for processing his pain through writing. This is the third piece of work by Saeed Jones that I’ve picked up, and I am still in awe at how much of a fierce literary force he is.
The stunning futuristic cover of this book entranced me, with a sleek chrome Audi reflecting the bright sun shine, in the middle of a lush sea of grass drew my eye and I knew that I couldn’t leave the bookstore without it in my collection.
Alive At the End of the World is a great book for the older YA reader that wants to branch out and expand their reading interests. I would passionately recommend this book to readers who are looking to dive into (or return to) the genre of poetry and appreciate the versatility of it, like myself.
Among the heavy subjects in the book, there is also sensuality, joy and laughter, which serves as a reminder: even if world is ending around us, we can still choose to love one another, fight for the rights of others, and support our community. This is the most radical thing that we can do now, especially as we begin Pride month.
About the Author
Rashauna Herm is a 30 something Denver local. She enjoys a good potato-based dish, scary movies and glitter.
