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Without Terminus: untraining an archive
A dazzlingly inventive account of kinship and dispossession by a two-time Minnesota Book Award–winning author
In his first work of nonfiction, poet chaun webster blends memoir, archival research, visual poetics, and cultural criticism to trace the ways structural anti-Black violence has shaped his inheritance, and grapples with the question of how to know—and mourn—the kin he was never able to meet.
webster is particularly drawn to his grandfather Reginald, who worked for years as a Pullman porter, who was denied rest while his labor enabled rest for others, and who died without receiving a pension before webster was born. Returning to the figures of Reginald and the train, webster explores the relationship between comportment and confinement, speaking in tongues in the Pentecostal church, the ancestral meeting place of dreams, his fraught relationship with his mother, and moments with his own child. Throughout, webster also reflects on nonbiological kinship, tethering his and his predecessors’ lives to those of several historical Black figures—Harriet Jacobs, John Henry, Henry “Box” Brown, and Henry Dumas, a writer who was killed by New York City police while riding the subway.
Attempting to exhaust the possibilities of the sentence and the grammar of anti-Blackness, webster riffs and rails on the debris within reach. Part elegy, part archival detective story, and part visual poem, Without Terminus is a philosophically rigorous and deeply moving text that takes us beyond the archive of loss.
In his first work of nonfiction, poet chaun webster blends memoir, archival research, visual poetics, and cultural criticism to trace the ways structural anti-Black violence has shaped his inheritance, and grapples with the question of how to know—and mourn—the kin he was never able to meet.
webster is particularly drawn to his grandfather Reginald, who worked for years as a Pullman porter, who was denied rest while his labor enabled rest for others, and who died without receiving a pension before webster was born. Returning to the figures of Reginald and the train, webster explores the relationship between comportment and confinement, speaking in tongues in the Pentecostal church, the ancestral meeting place of dreams, his fraught relationship with his mother, and moments with his own child. Throughout, webster also reflects on nonbiological kinship, tethering his and his predecessors’ lives to those of several historical Black figures—Harriet Jacobs, John Henry, Henry “Box” Brown, and Henry Dumas, a writer who was killed by New York City police while riding the subway.
Attempting to exhaust the possibilities of the sentence and the grammar of anti-Blackness, webster riffs and rails on the debris within reach. Part elegy, part archival detective story, and part visual poem, Without Terminus is a philosophically rigorous and deeply moving text that takes us beyond the archive of loss.
- GenresNonfictionPoetry
224 pages, Paperback
Published June 2, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 5, 2026
“Without Terminus: untraining an archive by Chaun Webster is a highly inventive blend of memoir, archival reflection, and visual poetics that explores kinship, memory, and the enduring impact of structural violence. The book moves fluidly between personal history and cultural memory, creating a layered and reflective reading experience.
What stands out most is the form. Webster’s use of fragmented structure, poetic language, and archival thinking gives the work a unique rhythm that feels both intellectual and deeply emotional. It resists traditional nonfiction storytelling in favor of something more experimental and associative.
The themes of inheritance, loss, and non-biological kinship are handled with sensitivity, especially in the way personal family history is connected to broader historical figures and systems.
Overall, Without Terminus is a powerful and formally innovative work of nonfiction that will strongly appeal to readers who enjoy experimental writing, hybrid memoir, and literary works that challenge traditional narrative structure.”
What stands out most is the form. Webster’s use of fragmented structure, poetic language, and archival thinking gives the work a unique rhythm that feels both intellectual and deeply emotional. It resists traditional nonfiction storytelling in favor of something more experimental and associative.
The themes of inheritance, loss, and non-biological kinship are handled with sensitivity, especially in the way personal family history is connected to broader historical figures and systems.
Overall, Without Terminus is a powerful and formally innovative work of nonfiction that will strongly appeal to readers who enjoy experimental writing, hybrid memoir, and literary works that challenge traditional narrative structure.”
Review of advance copy
"Fanon believed the dreams of the colonized to be muscular. you dream a territory, or perhaps beyond one. a phantom geography full of spectral things with which you are entangled... unspool the dream as though its reck were record"
this book is gorgeous. am grateful to have gotten to read it prior to its release. am thinking of dreams and mothers and hauntings and language/sentences/grammar and much, much more.
this book is gorgeous. am grateful to have gotten to read it prior to its release. am thinking of dreams and mothers and hauntings and language/sentences/grammar and much, much more.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews