Magic City Gospel

by Ashley M. Jones

Overview

Magic City Gospel is a love song to Birmingham, the Magic City of the South. In traditional forms and free verse poems, 2015 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award-winner Ashley M. Jones takes readers on an historical, geographical, cultural, and personal journey through her life and the life of her home state. From De Soto’s “discovery” of Alabama to George Wallace’s infamous stance in the schoolhouse door, to the murders of black men like Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner in modern America, Jones weaves personal history with the troubled, triumphant, and complicated history of Birmingham, and of Alabama at large. In this assured debut, you’ll find why “gold is laced in Alabama’s teeth.” In the ghosts and the grits, this collection speaks to Jones' generation and beyond: “Let me wash you in Alabama heat / and tell you who you are.” Magic City Gospel is a book of personal, political, and cultural history, whose red dirt stained pages offer a fresh and unvarnished gaze on Birmingham, Alabama, and America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938235269
Publisher:	Hub City Press
Publication date:	01/01/2017
Pages:	72
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Ashley M. Jones received an MFA from Florida International University. She was a finalist in Hub City Press’ New Southern Voices Contest, Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award Contest, and the National Poetry Series. Her work has been published by the Academy of American Poets, pluck!, PMSPoemMemoirStory, Prelude, Kinfolks Quarterly, and other journals. She received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award and a 2015 B-Metro Magazine Fusion Award. She is an editor of [PANK] Magazine, and she teaches creative writing at the Alabama School of Fine Arts.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/19/2016
Jones paints a sweeping picture of Southern culture in her terrific debut collection, exhibiting pride of place as well as unflinching honesty about the traumas of its historical legacy. Jones juggles the idea of the South as home with its contradictory reality, wherein the innocence of childhood is threatened by the cruelty of racism. In the poem “Nem,” Jones discusses the duality of her Southern identity, feeling like an outsider yet protected within her black community. “Inside, you tilt with excitement,” Jones writes, “You light up, a pinball machine of colloquialisms.” She continues, “you’re the only black girl in most of your classes. It is easy to blend in and stand out.” Like the collection itself, the poem showcases both the sacred and tender parts of a personal identity shaped by the South. This is also apparent in the poem “Addie, Carole, Cynthia, Denise,” in which Jones discusses the 1963 bombing of Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church and references “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” which originates from a racist pre–Civil War folk song (the Disney version of the song has been criticized for sweeping its racist origins under the rug and reinforcing racist stereotypes). Through rich imagery and fluid language, Jones paints a complete picture of the South without sugarcoating the truth. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

01/01/2017
Rona Jaffe Award winner Jones explores race, identity, history, and Birmingham, AL, in this debut collection.

Library Journal