ABOUT THIS BOOKIn Chi Boy, Keenan Norris melds memoir, cultural criticism, and literary biography to indelibly depict Chicago—from the Great Migration to the present day—as both a cradle of black intellect, art, and politics and a distillation of America’s deepest tragedies. With the life and work of Richard Wright as his throughline, Norris braids the story of his family and particularly of his father, Butch Norris, with those of other black men—Wright, Barack Obama, Ralph Ellison, Frank Marshall Davis—who have called Chicago home. Along the way he examines the rise of black street organizations and the murders of Yummy Sandifer and Hadiya Pendleton to examine the city’s status in the cultural imaginary as “Chi-Raq,” a war zone within the nation itself. In Norris’s telling, the specter of violence over black life is inescapable: in the South that Wright and Butch Norris escaped, in the North where it finds new forms, and worldwide where American militarism abroad echoes brutalities at home. Yet, in the family story at the center of this unforgettable book, Norris also presents an enduring vision of hope and love.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHYKeenan Norris has written for the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. His books include the novel The Confession of Copeland Cane and the anthology Street Lit: Representing the Urban Landscape. He teaches at San José State University.
REVIEWS“The author’s precise, often luminous prose powerfully reconstructs his family’s journey and its reflection of Chicago’s troubling relationship to Black America … [A] striking, unusual blend of meditative memoir and urgent social critique.” —Kirkus
“Poignant and elegantly written, this is a moving look at a city’s contradictions laid bare.” —Publishers Weekly
“One of the most beautifully written books I’ve ever read. … Chi Boy is a powerful indictment of Jim Crow’s enduring legacy. Both deeply personal and deeply political, it is a palpable denunciation of white supremacy and the foundational lies that sustain it.” —Eleanor J. Bader, The Indypendent