Report from Part One

When Brooks developed her first memoir project, Report from Part One, she insisted that it be printed by Broadside Press. The result was an experimental book containing interviews, letters from the poet’s parents and children, and approximately eighty photographs—personal family pictures as well as snapshots of collaborators, colleagues, neighbors, and other community members, many taken by photographer Roy Lewis. Brooks dedicated the book to these friends and fellow Black artists who fed her creativity and work. The inclusion of these names and photos in Brooks’s memoir shows how integral community was in her life, introducing a collective impulse into the tradition of autobiographical writing.