| dc.description.abstract | Saint Gary is a full-length poetry manuscript of documentary poetics centered on the 2011 horror story of the Ammons Family Haunting in Gary, Indiana. Utilizing court documents, hospital records, maps, and first-hand accounts, the project strives to engage alternative forms of language to make poems personifying a Black family plagued by a mysterious supernatural force.
This series sets out to explore Black parenthood, the rust belt, the ethics of child protective services, the foster care system, and institutionalized racism. Latoya Ammons (the main personified subject in the manuscript) was criminalized immediately by the state of Indiana when she asked for help with her suspected haunting. Her three children were subsequently taken away from her without any warning, and forced into separate foster situations and halfway houses for six months. Black parents are continuously demonized by the American government, and Saint Gary was created to explore that reality in full.
Gary, Indiana as a rust-belt city has a complicated history — twenty years ago, it was declared "the most dangerous city in America" because of its high crime rate. Gary's negative stigma is still prevalent today, and this series is an attempt to humanize the city and celebrate its residents, the people who are on the ground working tirelessly to revive the community. The manuscript asks what it means to be neglected by something that was meant to protect, whether that be a parent or a government entity. It not only investigates the alleged haunting, but also explores the more terrifying reality of racism, governmental neglect, marginalized motherhood, and the history of forgotten and hyper-industrialized cities in America. | |
