The Trayvon Generation

In the summer of 2020, protests followed the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. Elizabeth Alexander responded with an essay about the inner lives of young Black Americans, written from the view of a mother looking at her sons' generation. It first appeared in The New Yorker.

The essay centres on young people who could never be shielded from the violence that has taken so many Black boys and men. Camera phones and the internet have made that violence more thoroughly documented and available at any moment, through news reports and social media.

Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012, when this generation was still in its teens, and his was the first of a series of names now widely known. Mothers who tried to keep the truth from their sons found that the digital age made it impossible.

This book expands the original essay, which drew wide attention and was shared by Barack Obama, John Legend and Melissa Harris Perry. Further essays frame it, and artwork by established and emerging Black artists accompanies the text.

Alexander moves from the past to its lasting effects on the present, then looks toward what the future might hold. Her writing carries pride, fear and love, and pays close attention to how pop culture and art shape the fight for racial justice across generations.