WATCHNIGHT

In WATCHNIGHT, we accompany Johnson-s unnamed protagonist on a psychedelic quest across myriad forms, places, and times marked by climate crisis, exodus, and Black trans identity-making. 

In exhilarating lyric poems and chiseled prose blocks, Cyr-Jarelle Johnson charts the history of his family alongside the history of Watchnight-a churchy holiday of messianic tarrying-and steps through portals to render the human faces of American internal migration and mass displacement-from countryside to city and back again. Spanning from 1803 to a near-future rife with class tension and racial anxiety, WATCHNIGHT is a study of Black bonds, Black grief, and Black flight.