Kendra Allen on "When You Learn the Alphabet"

Kendra Allen is the author of essay collection "When You Learn The Alphabet" and winner of the 2018 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction for University of Iowa Press. She was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama. Her work has been published in Brevity, December Magazine, and the Rumpus.

Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These parental relationships expose the conditioning that subconsciously informed her ideas on social issues such as colorism, feminism, war-induced PTSD, homophobia, marriage, and “the n-word,” among other things. These dynamics strive for some semblance of accountability, and the essays within this collection are used as displays of deep unlearning and restoring—balancing trauma and humor, poetics and reality, forgiveness and resentment. "When You Learn the Alphabet" allots space for large moments of tenderness and empathy for all black bodies—but especially all black woman bodies—space for the underrepresented humanity and uncared for pain of black girls, and space to have the opportunity to be listened to in order to evolve past it. 

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Co-presented with the Prince George's County Human Relations Commission, the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, and Loyalty Bookstores. Presented in association with Caroline County Public Library, Carroll County Public Library, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Howard County Library System, Kent County Public Library, Ruth Enlow Library of Garrett County, and Worcester County Library.