BOA Editions Ltd., paperback
Publication Date: April 16th, 2024
Publisher Marketing: Sheila Carter-Jones' Every Hard Sweetness is, on its surface, a collection that documents the experiences of a young African-American girl growing up in a small coal mining town "up North" during the Civil Rights Movement. However, peel back these initial layers and find an exercise in the historical record, a collection of incidents reflective of ongoing racial and class conflicts in an increasingly polarized United States. The landscape of the US documented by Carter-Jones is marked by an undercurrent of interconnectedness, one that rejects the individual and encourages people to look beyond the skin of self. Every Hard Sweetness is a book that acts as a balm, one that transcends differences to emphasize empathy as the core of all community care.