SO

The Study of Human Life

Joshua Bennett

Fiction & poetry

The Study of Human Life

By Joshua Bennett, visiting professor of literature

Penguin · 2022

In this deeply personal book, Bennett, a visiting professor who joins the MIT faculty this summer, recalls and reimagines social worlds almost but not entirely lost, all while gesturing toward the ones we are building now, in the midst of a state of emergency, together. Bennett opens with a set of autobiographical poems with themes of family, life, death, vulnerability, and the joys and dreams of youth. The central section features an alternate history where Malcolm X is resurrected from the dead, as is a young Black man shot by police some 50 years later. The final section includes poems about fatherhood, on the heels of Bennett's first child being born.

From Summer 2023 recommended reading from MIT (MIT News). Cover image via Google Books.