Miles From Motown, book review
Lisa Sukenic
Fitzroy Books, 2021
I remember moving in the middle of 4th grade—it’s the main reason I still stumble in multiplication. We were somewhere in the times table at one school and near the end at the next school. Thus, a gap.
Making friends was always hard for me, much easier to find books to read—so I usually ended up in the school library. Where I discovered a book that helped bridge the gap in my heart between old and new:
The Wonderful Year by Nancy Barnes
For many of us who value story as a way to understand the world, there is such a book. I believe Lisa’s book will be just that.
Miles From Motown is an ode to Detroit, the Motor City—and more, it is an ode to a certain time: where the Vietnam War is waging, the Blue Flu is infecting the police department, where “White Flight” is taking place as minorities exercise their right to move into the suburbs. We get the sense that Detroit and Georgia Johnson are on the cusp. Of painful decisions, of facing life’s hardships.
But, for now there is only the hurdle of moving and fitting into a new neighborhood, of rearranging her life to meet this new situation. She does this by journaling and composing poems. Before leaving her old classroom Georgia signs up to participate in a city-wide poetry contest to be judged by the poet Gwendolyn Brooks. The only problem is that she is about to move out of the Detroit school system and technically would not be considered eligible for the contest. She contrives a lie and uses her aunt’s home address and submits her poem, “The Spirit of Detroit”. Her poem is about the resilience of a city about to undergo great cultural and societal change.
Even today we see the scars of Detroit on TV news.
This book is about the best of memories growing up in a close-knit family and neighborhood where people help one another and diversity is not something to resist but dwell in. The story written in prose verse moves the reader closer to acceptance of whatever the future may throw at us. With friends and family, all things can be met with courage.
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