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Article

“The one thing that frustrates me more than anything is when people talk about this post racial society because it’s not. I wake up every day and I know it’s not. I mean all you have to do is look at the way the president is treated in places, if he was Caucasian they would never yell at him and call him a liar in a speech, that stuff is all coded racially.” Assistant professor Adrian Matejka an African American poet at Indiana University Bloomington answered while expressing his views on post racism and if his book “The Big smoke” showed that we don’t live in a post racism society.

After two years of archival research on the legendary boxer Jack Johnson,Matejka decided to write the poems as first-person monologues from Johnson’s perspective. The Book tells the story of Johnson’s life and struggle as a boxer (1878-1946). Johnson was the first African American heavyweight champion of (1908-1915). Although Johnson grew up in Galveston, Texas an environment that didn't put emphasis on race Johnson still had to deal with other parts of the country that did. Because of his race he had to chase boxer Tommy Burns to fight him in a ring because he was black. Other events such as riots, and death happened because of his winning of the Heavy weight champion title.

Matejka believes that Jack Johnson will always be relevant because he was the first African American heavy weight champion and feels “he was a template forMuhammad Ali and other great fighters”. The Big Smoke nominated for a Pulitzer and was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the 2014 Anisfield-Wolf Award as well as the Guggenheim Fellowship.

Adrian Matejka is the real deal!,” said Marcus Wicker, assistant professor of English at the University of southern Indiana and director of the New Harmony Writers Workshop. Wicker feels that Matejka can write in any mode—lyric, narrative, persona, wicker feels he’s always reevaluating his teaching pedagogy from the perspective of a working writer. Matejka was inspired to write poetry from both rap and poetry artist such as Mos Def and poetry Yusef Komunyakaa. He describes Komunyakaa as a heady, nuanced writer who is willing to let relatable moments of emotion shine through; one of his early collections, “Magic City,” was a huge influence on Matejka’s writing style.

Matejkja encourages and tell his daughter to be like Jack Johnson. Says “you have to be the toughest person in the world and you need to figure out what it is you want to do, and go get”. He hopes that there will be a post racism society so his daughter won’t have to experience certain things that he went through. He says, “the challenge is that its race but also economics”. Matejka explained that because these things are tied together in so many different ways, until we figure out the issues of poverty those things are going to hang around because there all intertwined.

Sources

Jennifer Piurek (2014-05-09). Adrian Matejks.

• IU English professor Adrian Matejka wins 2014 Guggenheim Fellowship for poetry (2014-05-09).

Finalist for Pulitzer in Poetry Adrian Matejka to read at USI (2014-05-09).