Eve L. Ewing’s poetry collection “1919,” published a century after the year of its title, looks back at and forward from the summer of 1919 to tell a story of how Black lives are lived in Chicago. Playwright J. Nicole Brooks’ new world premiere adaptation, now on stage at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, brings Ewing’s interweaving of research and imagination to thrilling, kinetic life.
Ewing, for those unfamiliar, is a public scholar and a faculty member at the University of Chicago, as well as a bit of a literary rock star, acclaimed as a writer of nonfiction, poetry, and even work for Marvel Comics (most prominently as a writer of the Chicago-based teen superhero Ironheart, soon to make her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”).
