Above the Fall Line

Above the Fall Line

Powerfully reckoning with history, this collection explores what it means to be a white citizen in the years following the Civil Rights movement. Poems take us into classrooms resonant with the dream of Martin Luther King, but also into Confederate war trenches in Richmond, Virginia, a city still worshipping its past. How does a young woman define herself in this environment, especially after the sudden loss of the father who may have guided her? From confusion and contradictions emerges a voice that challenges easy answers, finds the "dirt of heritage" in her family tree, but also imagines the perspectives of early Americans including Abraham Lincoln. In an ongoing quest for truth, poems find insight and unexpected moments of beauty. Clara Silverstein is the author of the historical novel Secrets in a House Divided, the memoir White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation, and four non-fiction books. Her poems have appeared in journals including Blackbird, the Paterson Literary Review, and at Boston City Hall. She teaches at Grub Street, and has worked as a journalist, an historian, and Program Director of the Chautauqua Writers' Center. Raised in Richmond, Virginia, she now lives in Boston.