What does it mean to be deemed promising in an unjust world? The award-winning poet and MIT Distinguished Chair of the Humanities interrogates this question—and offers a more expansive vision of giftedness—in this striking, original work.

“The People Can Fly will levitate your mind and enrich your soul." —Lena Waithe

What does promise cost in America? Especially when that promise is seen as grounds to separate us from the communities we cherish, and framed as the key to success, salvation, survival? In The People Can Fly, Dr. Joshua Bennett explores the complex position of black prodigies in a society that has, all too often, defined blackness as absence, as lack of intellect or inner life.   Through this hybrid work of memoir and cultural history, Dr. Bennett shares how his own acade...

What does it mean to be deemed promising in an unjust world? The award-winning poet and MIT Distinguished Chair of the Humanities interrogates this question—and offers a more expansive vision of giftedness—in this striking, original work.

“The People Can Fly will levitate your mind and enrich your soul." —Lena Waithe

What does promise cost in America? Especially when that promise is seen as grounds to separate us from the communities we cherish, and framed as the key to success, salvation, survival? In The People Can Fly, Dr. Joshua Bennett explores the complex position of black prodigies in a society that has, all too often, defined blackness as absence, as lack of intellect or inner life.   Through this hybrid work of memoir and cultural history, Dr. Bennett shares how his own acade...