ously named Chelsea as he attempts and often fails
to relate to the white members of his family; his
various white friends and lovers, including a sister
and a lover both named Anne; and the black people
who cross his path as both aliens and, as his buying
of a building in a Boston ghetto suggests, the bear-
ers of potential salvation. Over a series of increas-
ingly intense and frustrating encounters, Chelsea is
forced to find ways to integrate the privilege that
he has no desire to repudiate into his identity as
a black man in a society that can see him only as
an attractive but essentially threatening anomaly.
His condition is symbolized by the game that gives
the novel its title, a game played on ice, generally
in countries that have few blacks, in which heavy
stones with handles are slid toward a target.
Despite critical acclaim from figures as promi-
nent as Kurt Vonnegut, who declared The People
One Knows to be the most significant debut novel
since Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms,
Boles’s novels were too singular to be easily assim-
ilated into the black literary culture of the post–
CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT era and stood little chance
of appealing to critics and readers whose tastes had
been shaped by the dictates of BLACK NATIONALISM
and the notions of a BLACK AESTHETIC that grew
from them. Although Boles has not published
another novel, he continued to publish short fic-
tion. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker,
Tri-Quarterly, LANGSTON HUGHES’s anthology The
Best Short Stories by Black Writers: The Classic An-
thology From 1899 to 1967, and Calling the Wind:
Twentieth-Century African-American Short Stories,
edited by CLARENCE MAJOR.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Southgate, L. Black Plots and Black Characters: A
Handbook for Afro-American Literature. Syracuse,
N.Y.: Gaylord Professional Publications, 1979.
Terry Rowden
Bonair-Agard, Roger (1969– )
A native of Trinidad and Tobago who resides in
Brooklyn, New York, Roger Bonair-Agard has
emerged as one of the progenitors of what is being
heralded as a renaissance of black poetry and spo-
ken-word performance. Bonair-Agard immigrated
to the United States in 1987 to attend Hunter Col-
lege as a pre-law student and changed gears just
one week before his law school entrance exam. He
channeled his energies toward becoming a poet,
embracing poetry with a dedication to craftsman-
ship as well as an honesty and passion that made
him instantly recognizable as a new and enduring
poetic voice.
The intersections of his Caribbean heritage, his
American present, and his global awareness are
ever-present influences in his work, which reflects
on male-female relationships, family, island life,
and the sociopolitical issues facing the black dias-
pora. His most notable and frequently anthologized
poems are “How the Ghetto Loves Us Back,” “Love
in a Time of Revolution Is Hard Work (Poetz),”
and “Song for Trent Lott.” Though Bonair-Agard
is a prominent voice in the slam movement, which
emphasizes both the writing and performance of
poetry, he recognizes its limitations in determining
the best poet from a myriad of poetry perform-
ers. Along with Lynne Procope and Guy LeCharles
Gonzales, he founded the Louder Arts Project to
concentrate on the writing of poetry rather than
its performance. Louder Arts also seeks to foster a
sense of community awareness, conducting poetry
workshops for youths and homeless communities.
He is also affiliated with the Community-Word
Project and Youth Speaks, which are art-in-educa-
tion programs for younger poets.
Bonair-Agard’s poetic craft has received na-
tional and international recognition. Named Nuy-
orican Fresh Poet of the Year in 1998, he coached
the Nuyorican Poets Café’s team to its first na-
tional championship that same year and coedited
Burning Down the House (2000), an anthology of
the poems written by the championship team. He
has also appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, the
MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, and CBS’s 60 Minutes.
His first full-length collection, Chaos Congealed,
was published in 2004.Candace Love JacksonBonair-Agard, Roger 63