- A new book titled "Black Summers: Growing Up in The Urban Outdoors" features a collection of stories, poems, and drawings by Detroiters about their summer experiences here in the city.

The anthology explores the struggles, the joy, and the resilience of African Americans navigating summer fun in Detroit's public spaces.

Yours truly is one of the contributors.

The editor of the anthology is award-winning author and journalist Desiree Cooper.

I am pleased to have her as our guest here on "American Black Journal."

Desiree, it's always great to see you.

Welcome back to the show.

- It's so good to see you.

Thanks for having me.

- Yeah.

So I, of course, love this anthology.

And you and I have talked about it now for a very long time.

But I don't think I know the answer to the question about how you came up with this as an idea.

This idea of summer.

Summer in Detroit.

And the experiences that we, as African Americans, have that are very distinct from other folks here in Detroit in the summers.

What sort of piqued your curiosity here about this subject?

- Yeah, so the book is dedicated to the memory of Sarah Elizabeth Ray.

And she was the woman that not many Detroiters know about.

She integrated the Bob-Lo boats.

So that iconic summer experience for Detroiters.

The Bob-Lo boat.

People remember being there with family.

With people from all walks of life.

It being integrated.

Well, it wasn't always the case.

And, in 1948, she won a US Supreme Court decision that opened up the Bob-Lo boat for everyone.

And so, part of me, I had been doing a lot of work around her history and telling her story.

And I just sort of had this question of, you know, what if she was around now, you know?

How would she feel about the liberties and the freedoms that we are experiencing now, compared to 1948?

Well, I shouldn't say now because it's a little precarious now.

- Right, we're not sure.

(laughs) We're not sure right now.

(laughs) - But to my point.

Or would she say, wow, I would've thought we would've come further.

Or I would've thought things would be much more different.

And so I said, why not ask current Detroiters about what their core summer memories are or experiences are and how it's shaped by race.

- Yeah.

- Still today.

- Yeah, yeah.

One of the things about this collection that I think is really important to note is, like, all things Black, it represents this incredible breadth of experience, of emotion, of thought and understanding.

It's not one thing.

It's not many things.

It's all things.

And there's something, I think, kind of intrinsic about the African American experience and noting that it is all things, rather than, you know, a set of things, or one thing, which I think it too often gets reduced to that.

- Right.

And I did, you know, I reached out and got writers, who were 16 teenagers when they started.

This was a three-year project.

So people aged out of those groups during the process.

And I think the oldest writer was 74 at the time when they offered the essay.

So I purposely tried to get a range in terms of that, in terms of geography.

And I will agree with you that everyone brought their own lives to the table, right?

But at the same time, there is the specter of race that is common.

And then their reactions were individual, you know.

And how it played out for them in their lives is individual.

So one of my hopes was exactly as you're saying.

And that is that, across the nation, people can read a book like this and find themselves in it.

No matter who they are.

They can remember bike riding in the summer, or the pools in the summer, or the fishing in the summer.

But there's also going to be aspects of it that they'll say, "I never thought of."

Or that they will feel validated that their summer experiences, which haven't really been widely portrayed or are not part of the usual nostalgia around summer, are included in these pages.

- Yeah, yeah.

The aspect of memory here, I think, is also really key.

The way that, for us, as African Americans, memory plays a different role, often, in our lives in terms of how we come to the places we are or how we think of the world.

That's another theme that I think is so strong in the book.

- Stephen, when I came to you and I said, I have this idea, and I'm wondering if you would be willing to contribute, you did not hesitate.

And you know what you said to me?

You said, "I have a story that I've always wanted to tell and I've never told."

So get the book and hear the story that Stephen has been holding in.

But I will tell you this much about that story.

That it explores what racial trauma does to a person, especially when they meet it out of nowhere as a child.

And I do feel that, in this day and age, when we have now sort of been re-traumatized in real time with Black Lives Matter, with, you know, the protest in Minnesota, and ICE, we're horrified by these things.

And many people are saying, "I can't watch anymore.

I feel traumatized."

Well, dial it back, right, to the pre-Civil Rights era, or before the rebellion in Detroit, or during the rebellion in Detroit.

And one thing that I realized is that Detroit had a trauma that we have not quite, we don't talk about it as trauma, first of all.

And so, of course, it hasn't healed.

- Right, right.

- So there may be an aspect of that too.

And I appreciate you sharing a story that really helps us open that up.

- Yeah, yeah.

I mean, without spoiling the chance for people to read it, I mean, I will say that it's a story about the first time I was made aware of the history of racism and discrimination in this country.

And I was a very small child.

And I think that's a very common experience, of course, for African Americans.

And I had never told that story before.

You're right.

And I think that's also common.

That, for a lot of us, it's just a story we carry with us in our minds and in our hearts, but that we don't necessarily share with the world.

- I think that's part of what I was trying to bring out in every essay.

And that is, our brains will take these experiences and either forget them, downplay them.

And we have had a survival instinct, as a people, to hold onto the joy.

To hold onto the happy.

To hold onto the fun.

And so that's definitely in the essays.

But it's a moment where we can bring to the fore, also, the pain that co-existed, you know.

So it's not a Pollyanna collection of, wee, you know, we had a good time.

You know, one thing I purposely did not want was writers that would say, we played until the streetlights went off, or came on.

Or everybody in the neighborhood got along.

And everybody parented us, you know.

Blah, blah, blah.

Okay, you know, that is our nostalgia.

And it's true.

It's true.

But it's a truth that we prefer to put forward, versus the true existence, you know, of what was, so.

- Yeah, yeah.

Complication is, of course, always part of truth.

So I wanna talk about the cover.

'Cause everyone I've run into who's seen the book or heard about it is raving about the cover.

Talk about that image and how you chose it.

- Well, I do want people to understand that this is a Detroit production through and through.

- All the way, right.

- It's out of Wayne State University Press.

All of the contributors have either been raised in Detroit or currently still live in Detroit.

And the cover is from Detroit artist, Senghor Reid, who gave us permission to use his artwork as a basis for the cover.

And you wouldn't believe when you see the whole artwork.

You'd have to Google it.

It's called "Make Way for Tomorrow."

And it's like a collage of images around a pool with Black family having a great time.

And so we isolated this one image.

The designer did.

The designer, Crystal Marshall, also Black, isolated that image.

Because, man, either that kid is being thrown into a pool or that kid is jumping in with huge abandon.

And isn't that sort of like the joy and then the scariness, the wow, you know, that can really paint our experiences in the summertime.

- Yeah, yeah.

No, it's a great cover.

I have, of course, a little card of it here at the house.

So people have been asking me about it for several months now.

So, now, they have the answer.

All right, Desiree Cooper, wonderful work here with the book.

Not just because I'm in it.

But the whole thing, of course.

- It's more wonderful because you were able to participate.

And we're happy about that.

- Yeah.

But thanks so much for joining us here on "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

- That'll do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org.

And you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care.

And we'll see you next time.

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