The Work of James E. Cherry

Reviewed by Dr. Brenda M. Greene
Between Chance and Mercy: Poems
Edge of the Wind: A Novel
By James E. Cherry

James E. Cherry, a socially and politically conscious poet, novelist, and author of Between Chance and Mercy: Poems (Willow Books, 2024) and Edge of the Wind: A Novel (Stephen F. Austin Press, 2022) reminds us that in the words of the feminist poet, essayist, and activist Audre Lorde, silence cannot protect you. Influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights, Movement, Black Arts Movement, Black Lives Movement, and the current state of this nation, his writing is a reflection on what it means to be a Black man in these United States of America.

In Between Chance and Mercy, Cherry calls out incidents of social injustice and the effects of racism in the lives of Black people. He invites readers to witness the devastating impact of environmental disasters in “After the Storm;” to cherish the legacy of our fathers in “The Toolbox;” to celebrate Black soldiers who have given their lives in “Freedom (After the 61st Regiment of the US Colored Troops); to remember the Black men and women who have been victims of racial profiling and killing in “I Can’t Breathe” and “Trayvon;” and to recall the ways we were forced to live when COVID dominated our spaces in the poems “Social Distance” and “Love in the Time of Covid.”
An avid admirer of Amiri Baraka, Cherry highlights Baraka as a poet immersed in the blues and bohemia who transitioned from Greenwich Village to Harlem and became more politically conscious after the assassination of Macolm X. In “The Prodigal (for Amiri Baraka),” the speaker writes:

You left behind a wall of Beats
and Bohemia,
went searching for your life
with nothing
but the poems on your back
and found it
on the doorstep of 125th Street.
Blues people
pulled your coat on corners
of consciousness.
You crafted masterpieces of
their anger, doubts, dreams,
hung them on the wall of a movement.

In Cherry’s novel, Edge of the Wind, the protagonist, Alex, is a mentally unbalanced young Black man who takes a poetry professor and her students hostage at a state community college. Cherry’s prose is poetic; his description of the landscape surrounding the school is layered with metaphors. “The morning wore a cloak of many colors: verdant grasses, maples, dogwoods all ablaze upon the canvas of the earth.”
As the story unfolds, Langston Hughes’ poem “Harlem” comes to mind. The protagonist Alex watches the morning unfold: “the crispness of the day, the colors in the landscape, and the blueness of the sky reminded him of a dream.” Like the speaker in Hughes’ poem “Harlem,” Alex dreams, and readers may be reminded of what happens to a dream deferred.

The drama of the hostage situation heightens, and Cherry takes readers into the minds of characters in the classroom who include the protagonist Alex who is determined that the instructor teach him to become a poet; a man who has been forced out of his job as he nears retirement; a woman who has been diagnosed with cancer; an aspiring blues singer; and a young man who yearns to become a major baseball league player. These multiple voices of non-traditional college students reflect on their dreams while being held hostage.
Mrs. Verdell, the classroom teacher, plays a significant role in helping Alex to realize his dream of becoming a poet. She then guides him in the steps he should use when composing poetry.

Let the images in your poem be so stark and striking and compelling that words like ‘frustrated’ won’t be necessary. . . . Employ rich and vivid metaphors and similes in your work to make the language powerful enough to light a fire on the page.
It is clear that Mrs. Verdell understands Alex’s passion and sees him as a young man who desperately wants to be a poet. She does not try to quiet this desire or his dream.

Readers will come away from Edge of the Wind with questions: How do you inspire young people to hold onto dreams? How do we treat mental illness? And how many incarcerated young Black men and women are really victims of a system that does not deeply probe their mental state? This novel reminds us that we must carefully interrogate the nature of mental illness in our nation.

James E. Cherry is the author of four books of poetry, two novels, and a collection of short fiction. For more information, visit www.jamescherry.com

Dr. Brenda M. Greene is Professor Emerita and Founder and Executive Director Emerita of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, CUNY. For more information, visit https://www.drbrendamgreene.com