National Book Award-winning poet Nikky Finney and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa read works they wrote in tribute to Richard Wright and Zora Neale Hurston, who once said that black writers “passed nations through their mouths.”
“Her two calico dresses are with her for sure. A good strong bonnet, one jar of sea shells all stuffed away,” Finney read, her voice booming into the mic. “You will find the indigo swirling from neck to him to rim on every bit of everything. The same color of the southern sky that is impossible to wash out.”