AUDIO: ‘Critical Race Theory: The Year in Review 2014’: a Candid Poem About Modern-Day Racism

Lisa Alvarez’s straightforward poem gets to the core of a year in which violence against black people became impossible to look away from any longer. Listen to the poet’s reading of “Critical Race Theory: The Year in Review 2014” and read along, below.

Lisa Alvarez’s poetry has most recently appeared in Zocalo Public Square and Codex Journal and is forthcoming in Huizache: The Magazine of Latino Literature. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the American Book Review, Los Angeles Times, OC Weekly, Santa Monica Review, Faultline and Green Mountains Review, and in the anthologies “Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the United States and Latin America,” “Latinos in Lotusland” and “Geography of Rage: Remembering the Los Angeles Riots of 1992.” With Alan Cheuse, she edited “Writers Workshop in a Book: The Community of Writers on the Art of Fiction.” She is a professor of English at Irvine Valley College and for over a decade has co-directed the Writers Workshops at the Community of Writers.