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ABOUT THE BOOK

AMERICA SPELLS

I AM RACE

This is not soft reflection. It is a reckoning.

Gerard Matthews’ America Spells I Am Race dismantles the myth of racial progress in the United States and confronts the country’s unfinished business from 1619 to today. It chronicles how systemic racism has reinvented itself across slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and into the present, exposing the “Racial System of White Supremacy” that still shapes American life.

This book is Gerard’s testimony — blunt, unflinching, and rooted in lived experience. It refuses the comfort of denial and demands that America face its contradictions.

What You’ll Find Inside

01: A Direct Indictment of History

How the promises of freedom were sabotaged, redefined, and denied to millions — from the enslaved to the present day.

02: Exposing the Lie of Progress

Why America’s narrative of equality is a performance masking cycles of oppression and reinvention.

03: A Challenge to the Reader

This is not art for escape. It is a call to account, a demand to decide what side of history you stand on.

WHAT READER SAYS!

“Pain and hope, fire and grace.”

Gerard Matthews writes with a fire that illuminates both wounds and healing. These poems don’t shy away from the hardest truths, but they also refuse despair. It’s a rare balance, and it left me feeling both challenged and renewed.

— Monica J.

“A conversation, not just a collection.”

I felt like Gerard was talking directly to me — questioning, encouraging, pushing me to reflect. The book doesn’t let you stay comfortable. It invites you into a conversation about identity and justice that lingers after you close the cover.

— Lisa P.

“Words that cut and words that heal.”

In one moment I felt pierced by painful honesty, in the next comforted by hope. That ability to hold grief and joy side by side is what makes this collection powerful. It reminds me that art can wound and heal at the same time.