The Other Revival
by Salaam Green
“Honest, vulnerable, insightful, and hopeful, Green’s poems are soul food.” —Imani Perry
The Other Revival is a story of homecoming. This collection of poems revolves around a house built in Harpersville, Alabama in 1841. Thirty-nine people enslaved by Samuel Wallace, the owner of the property, constructed the house and worked the land.
For generations, the house remained in the Wallace family and is now a reconciliation center where Black, white, and mixed-race descendants come together. Salaam Green has led many of these gatherings and worked with descendants to create these, and many other, poems. The Other Revival is her poetic journey to one rural place that is a crossroads of racial, economic, and enslavement heritage. It is an elegy and a blessing.
Salaam Green is the inaugural poet laureate of historic Birmingham, Alabama, 2024-2025. She graduated from the University of Montevallo with an English degree and has a MS in Early Childhood Education from the University of North Dakota. Green has garnered residencies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, The Wallace House for Arts and Reconciliation, and Auburn University. She has spent more than 16 years as an arts educator, healer, and community leader.