Lullaby

Publication Instance Details #3348

Publication Overview

Translation	Is Multilingual	Explicit Irish Context?	Ekphrasis	Has Paratext?	Reference to News, Media or Technology
No	No	No	No	Yes	No

Details

Human Rights Issues	Gender-based violence Racism/anti-Semitism/Sectarianism State Violence Torture
Languages	English
Genre	Dramatic Monologue
Medium	Print Collection
Paratext Text	(An incident of the East St. Louis Race Riots, when some white women flung a living colored baby into the heart of a blazing fire.)
Notes	As the paratext indicates, this poem responds to a particular incidence of racial violence during the East St. Louis Race Riots of 1917. It is composed in the form of a lullaby from the perspective of a white female who apparently takes on a caring role soothing a black child, but whose murderous intentions become evident when she throws him onto a bonfire, where his own mother is already being burned in an act of racial hatred. There is explicit reference to state complicity in the violence - men dressed 'in blue an' khaki' - do not protect the child or his mother, but join with the mob. Notably, this poem disrupts gendered and racial stereotypes: the main perpetrator of violence in this poem is a white female, supported and assisted in her actions by white men and women.