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Brutal Imagination

By: Cornelius Eady
Narrated by: Joe Morton, Sally Murphy
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Publisher's summary

Tony Award® nominee Joe Morton and stage veteran Sally Murphy star in this award-winning play based on a tragic true story. Using excerpts from real newspaper transcripts, Brutal Imagination reexamines the case of Susan Smith, a white mother who falsely accused a Black man of carjacking her and kidnapping her two young children. The riveting story, written by poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Cornelius Eady presents listeners with a unique perspective on the harrowing nine days between the fabricated crime and Smith’s eventual confession. As illuminating and resonant today as ever, Brutal Imagination confronts the patterns of injustice that have haunted African American men for decades.

©2001 Cornelius Eady (P)2021 AO Media LLC
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About the Creator

Cornelius Eady is the author of Brutal Imagination, finalist for the 2001 National Book Award in Poetry. The play, based on the book, premiered at the Vineyard Theatre in New York in 2002, and received The Oppenheimer Award. In addition to Brutal Imagination, Eady has collaborated with jazz composer Deidre Murray on several theater pieces, including Running Man (finalist, Pulitzer Prize in Drama), You Don't Miss Your Water, and Fangs.
Eady is also the author of Hardheaded Weather (2008); the autobiography of a jukebox (1997); You Don't Miss Your Water (1995); The Gathering of My Name (1991), nominated for the Pulitzer Prize; BOOM BOOM BOOM (1988); Victims of the Latest Dance Craze (1985), chosen for the 1985 Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets; and Kartunes (1980).
In 1996, Eady and the poet Toi Derricote founded Cave Canem, a nonprofit organization serving Black poets of various backgrounds and acting as a safe space for intellectual engagement and critical debate. His honors include an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from the University of Rochester, the Prairie Schooner Strousse Award, a Lila Wallace- Reader's Digest Award, The Literarian Award from the National Book Foundation, The Elizabeth Kray Award from Poets House, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Rockefeller Foundation. Eady is also a songwriter and musician, collaborating with his folk trio and band Rough Magic. He has served as director of the Poetry Center at SUNY Stony Brook and director of the MFA Program for Writers at the University of Notre Dame and as the Miller Family Chair at the University of Missouri in Columbia.
In fall 2021, he will become Chair of Excellence in Poetry at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, a position previously held by the US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo.

Dear Listener,

Why should you listen to this story now?
"When I started to write the poems that would become the book, and then the play Brutal Imagination, I believe it was an attempt to flesh out why it was so easy for Susan Smith, a White Southern woman, who to my knowledge had no Black friends, to pull that imaginary guy out of her head to take the blame, and to do her horrible bidding. I wanted my poems to peel off the layers of that rancid onion to bring to light what she and everyone in this country carry around in our heads. But 20 years after the events of the true story, with Mr. Zero and Susan now reunited in Susan’s head, with the police murder of George Floyd and so many other Black men and women, with the rise of (and resistance to) the Black Lives Matter movement, after four years of nonstop political abuse to anyone who wasn’t male, super rich and White, it now strikes me as less a cat-and-mouse story between a racist murderess and her golem, and more about the process that has to occur before one can take the first steps toward liberation. Art, I think, is good for raising those questions, and also, as you listen to this reimagining of my play, consider what new world will be on the other side of that door. What will we carry with us, and what will we need to let drop and leave behind?" –Cornelius Eady, author of Brutal Imagination

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What listeners say about Brutal Imagination

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Please...

With no expectation, with no bias, with no guilt, with no anger, with no finger-pointing or stones in hand to cast...from a place of loss, disappointment, desperation, and impressions not of your own choosing...just listen...not just to this (I won't classify) but to echoes of thoughts and conversations about this and the parallel echoes this invokes. This is an opportunity to empathize with both sides of a topic we aren't comfortable with and possibly be gentle when we have to do so in the future. We've all been misunderstood. Let this be a start of relating to that feeling and seeking to understand before judging. This is a lesson we hate to admit we get wrong but desperately need to learn.

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19 people found this helpful

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excellent writing and production

This was a great production. I read the book it was based on and saw the play many years ago. A listener should come to this presentation aware that it's poetry that's more on the evocative, non-linear side rather than conventional prose writing. It also combines creative interpretations of the actual events with news text and excerpts from real interviews. If you come at it with an open mind and an appreciation for more "out of the box" thinking, you'll love this new way of presenting poetry, historical cases of racial profiling and true crimes. The actors and production team are spot-on. They really bring the characters to life and make us remember the two child victims of this tragedy.

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1 person found this helpful

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Brilliant illustration of a past news story!

I'm not sure if everyone remembers this news story that was a nationwide search. The author and narrators were great.

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  • Overall
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Heart wrenching!

I remember this event so clearly, but hearing it dramatized in this fashion was like hearing a story I never knew.

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  • Overall
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Good short story

Even though I know the story and the outcome I wanted it to be in the story almost like wanting the made up criminal to be vindicated but still very good

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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Obtuse

An enjoyable listen to a creative audio creation. Without having read the synopsis i would have no idea what inspired the narrative. Perhaps accompanied by a video slideshow of headlines from the event would have brought this one home.

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Intense performance

If a true story we all know but have never heard it like this before. It was a little scary at times cause I was listening on my headphones.
An interesting perspective of the imaginary perpetrator being inside her like she was possessed. the intensity of an angry inner monologue with both the mother and the imaginary black man speaking at once was scary but performed very well.

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Feels like the first time I heard about it SPOILERS

This was a masterpiece by all involved.

This is a horrific story and this new POV makes it worse.

Susan is the MONSTER in this stories in so many ways. She still is according to news reports.

Bravo to everyone involved in this production.

The narrators were perfect!

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12 people found this helpful

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50:50

I liked the premise of this story but found the narration a bit hard to keep up with, without visuals. It gave me the impression of a theatre performance, but without actors. But still, the story is a good one and very pertinent to current times. Good listen on a long drive.

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Heartbreaking

Hard to listen because it takes on hard truths about racism, how we usually see what we want to see, and how the unthinkable is sometimes true and yet hidden under easy prejudices.

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