Matthew E. Henry’s the Colored page is the semi-autobiographical journey of a Black kid’s education in predominantly white spaces. From first grade through doctoral study, to being an educator in his own classrooms, these poems explore 30+ years often being the only Black or Brown face in a classroom, department, or whole district. The Boston Globe says “With clarity and force, he corrects the misconception that Massachusetts, and the northeast, are bastions of tolerance and equality. Henry teaches hard lessons, and necessary ones.” In pieces that directly call out those responsible—educators, institutions, and peers alike—the speaker moves via Henry’s generously vivid poems through open letters, vignettes, and poetic narratives that uncover the realities of an educator’s life’s work in the “United” States today. In a world that so often seeks to minimize Black experiences, the Colored page does not inflate, but neither does it look away. Yet, too, there is joy in these pages. For as much as he shines that telling Black light on the stains of the institutions he has spent his life within, Henry here evidences a life well-lived, a life spent studying, growing, and thriving. Henry asks us to look at the vile and call it out, but then we are tasked to shift our focus to the glory that is the student who triumphs. Henry invites us, ultimately, to a celebration.

Matthew E. Henry (MEH) is the author of the Colored page (Sundress Publications, 2022), Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020), Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020), and has a forthcoming collection from New York Quarterly Books. The editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, MEH’s poetry and prose appears or is forthcoming in Barren Magazine, Fahmidan Journal, The Florida Review, Massachusetts Review, New York Quarterly, Ninth Letter, Ploughshares, Poetry East, Shenandoah, Solstice and Zone 3 among others. MEH’s an educator who received his MFA yet continued to spend money he didn’t have completing an MA in theology and a PhD in education. You can find him at www.MEHPoeting.com writing about education, race, religion, and burning oppressive systems to the ground.