Influential author and historian Robin D.G. Kelley opens up about his past, grapples with his family history, and reckons with a legacy of violence, fear, and love in the latest issue of The Nation. Tasked with writing an obituary for his father, Kelley offers a thoughtful meditation on his complicated grief—mining his biography and personal memories to paint a portrait of a difficult man and the ways in which faith, race, and patriarchy shaped them both:
The Death and Life of My Father, Donald S. Kelley
“I knew how to write an obituary. But an obituary requires a certain kind of artifice, a narrative cleansing not unlike the undertaker's work of preparing and dressing a corpse for public viewing. Many of the most basic facts about my father's life concealed traumas—mine, my siblings', and his own,” writes Kelley.
“Two of my father's children literally ran away from home, and the other two had little or nothing to do with him. With no children to lord over, how could Donald Kelley attain his rightful place as the patriarch—a role for which he had been groomed his entire life?”
Read the full piece here.
ABOUT: Nation contributor Robin D.G. Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in US History at UCLA. His books include Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original; Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination; Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America; and Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression. His essays have appeared in The Boston Review, The New York Times, Color Lines, Counterpunch, Re-Thinking Marxism, New Labor Forum, and Souls, to name a few.
This feature appears in the October 17/24, 2022, edition of The Nation magazine—out now.
Founded by abolitionists in 1865, The Nation has chronicled the breadth and depth of political and cultural life from the debut of the telegraph to the rise of Twitter, serving as a critical, independent, and progressive voice in American journalism.
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