Holler: A Poet Among Patriots

by Danielle Chapman

A tour de force of prose style, Holler is poet Danielle Chapman's moving and provocative portrait of her Southern, military childhood ― and an unflinching reckoning with what such an inheritance means now. A crucial book for anyone with a racial conscience in today's divided America, Holler is one woman's account of "the miraculous catastrophe" of being human in an inhumane world, and proof that it's possible to fully face who we are while searching for forgiveness. Holler begins with Chapman's father's death, in a scuba diving accident in Okinawa, which she witnessed at age three. Brought back to the States by her father's father, the former Commandant of the United States Marine Corps, Chapman soon finds herself in the family's ancestral farmhouse in Tennessee ― a tavern built in 1790 and later an antebellum farm. There, Chapman encounters the pungent atmospheres of her Confederate forebears, and a living cast of Southern eccentrics and WWII warhorses, forcing her to confront America's racism and its wars. She enters her Gen X adolescence on fire with liberal outrage, but bewildered by "what to do about it." It's only as an adult, returning to her memories after decades working as a poet and a professor, that Chapman is able to tell the stories that made her childhood ― turning up the depth of their sins, their sufferings, their humor, and their grace. Chapman's second collection of poetry, Boxed Juice , is forthcoming from Unbound Edition Press in 2024.

Genres: Memoir

190 pages, Paperback

Published October 9, 2023

About the author

Danielle Chapman is the author of the poetry collection Delinquent Palaces (Northwestern University Press 2015). Her poetry has appeared in magazines and journals such as The Atlantic, Harvard Review, and The Nation, and The New Yorker. She is a critic as well as a poet, and her reviews have appeared in Poetry and the New York Times. Chapman directed the publishing-industry programs for the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture from 2007 to 2012. She lives in New Haven with her husband and twin daughters and teaches at Yale University.

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I devoured every single syllable of this exquisitely written memoir, relishing in each finely wrought detail and every beautiful, and anguished, second. Chapman's narrative stitches together memory, artifact, and emotion, taking brilliant and wholly unexpected turns as she unflinchingly investigates the people and places of her, and her Southern family's, complicated relationships and history. With great honesty and great love she painstakingly holds herself and her loved ones to hard account. And the hard work pays off. For, in attempting to contain what feels like unfathomable turmoil, pain, and chaos, Chapman transforms the past into something entirely new--a story and understanding of America, and of American families, that is totally breathtaking and truly glorious. "Holler" is a bright continuous song of love and grace cascading through space and time across distance and death. There's magic at work here. It’s magnificent. A must read.

[J.G.P. MacAdam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Danielle Chapman is a professor of poetry at Yale University. I wrote a review of her memoir "Holler: A Poet Among Patriots" for Atticus Review (https://atticusreview.org/book-review...).

Chapman is the grandkid of General Chapman, Marine Commandant during the Vietnam War. Her memoir collects the pieces of what it's like to grow up in a very military family. And what it's like to lose her father, also a Marine and Vietnam vet, at a very young age to as "ordinary" an accident as drowning while swimming at the beach on Okinawa.

Great book. Grab a copy at: https://www.unboundedition.com/.../ho...
(And thanks Cassie Mannes Murray at Pine State Publicity for an advanced reader's copy!😄)

[Hannah Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good- idk if I was just paying more attention at the end or what but the last 1/3 was slay but the rest was okay