Book review: Violent utopia: dispossession and black restoration in Tulsa by Jovan Scott Lewis

In Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa, Jovan Scott Lewis explores the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre in the city’s Greenwood neighbourhood (known colloquially as ‘Black Wall Street’) and its legacies today, including contemporary efforts to rebuild Black prosperity. Rooted in ethnographic sensitivity, this is a detailed, expansive and stirring examination of Greenwood’s history and the inexhaustible pursuit of place-based freedom, writes Thomas Cryer. Violent Utopia: Dispossession and Black Restoration in Tulsa. Jovan Scott Lewis. Duke University Press. 2022.