The People Can Fly
American Promise, Black Prodigies, and the Greatest Miracle of All Time
Contributors
Formats and Prices
- On Sale
- Feb 3, 2026
- Page Count
- 272 pages
- Publisher
- Little, Brown and Company
- ISBN-13
- 9780316576048
Price
$14.99Price
$19.99 CADFormat
Format:
- ebook $14.99 $19.99 CAD
- Hardcover $30.00 $40.00 CAD
- Audiobook Download (Unabridged) $24.99
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What does it mean to be deemed promising, gifted, in an unjust world? The award-winning poet and MIT Distinguished Chair of the Humanities interrogates this question—and offers a more expansive vision of giftedness—in this striking, original work.
What does promise cost in America? Especially when that promise is seen as grounds to separate us from the communities we cherish, and framed as the key to success, salvation, survival? In The People Can Fly, Dr. Joshua Bennett explores the complex position of black prodigies in a society that has, all too often, defined blackness as absence, as lack of intellect or inner life.
Through this hybrid work of memoir and cultural history, Dr. Bennett shares how his own academic journey reflected the ebb and flow of being seen as both promising and as a problem. He turns to the childhood archives of Malcolm X, Stevie Wonder, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, and others to further explore this theme: highlighting the role of cultural institutions, and loving communities, in shaping the lives of leading lights within African American culture. What’s more, Dr. Bennett clarifies how these spaces—these mentors, teachers, friends, and kin—helped defend young people from a world that sought to exclude them from its vision of promise and possibility.
With stunning prose and grace, The People Can Fly is an urgent reflection on what it means to be gifted, and to give one’s gifts away, in the present day. It is a praise song for generations of black dreamers who dared to imagine another world—where miracles abound, and ascension is only the beginning.
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.Praise for Joshua Bennett
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"Joshua Bennett knows his life’s purpose is to teach—and that’s exactly what he does with The People Can Fly. This book will levitate your mind and enrich your soul. The text doesn’t follow rules or pacify the reader. Bennett’s poetic nature shines through on every page. Not only is it a joy to read, but it’s an honor to be taught by one of the most prolific professors on the planet. This book is a masterclass in literature and a necessary reminder to cherish the child in all of us."Lena Waithe, Emmy Award-winning actor, producer, and screenwriter
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“Don’t miss this superb laying bare of Black joy and genius!”Dr. Cornel West, American philosopher and author of the national bestseller Race Matters
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“At a moment in American culture punctuated to a heartbreaking degree by acts of hatred, violence and disregard… Joshua Bennett’s astounding, dolorous, rejoicing voice is indispensable.”Tracy K. Smith, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of To Free the Captives
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“I am emboldened and sharpened by Bennett's genius and by his love made plain across each of these shimmering pages.”Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria
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“With a singularly expansive and compassionate view of history, Bennett sweeps across generations of joy, suffering, and connection.”Lit Hub
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“A tender celebration of vulnerability and the strength that blooms quietly in its presence.”The Atlantic
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“Bennett renders this lush history in lively, captivating prose, smoothly transporting us back to the city blocks, bars, cafes and stages these artists traversed and inhabited. Perhaps most endearingly, and what makes this book shine with a refreshing dynamism, is that this history is also his own.”Tas Tobey, New York Times
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