The Punishments Must Be a School

Poetry: Emily August's debut explodes our ideas about biraciality and why institutions are larded with violence.

This ferocious vision of personal and cultural histories enters us through dark-wooded stories, folkloric in their eerie clarity. This brilliant, heartbreaking book confronts race, power, violence, and how we shape one another, daring us to contemplate what it could mean to "put the fear down."