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The Veil by Taylor Harris (Hypocrite Press) 

For many students today, Poe Alley is simply a well-traveled route on the way to class or back home to their dorms.  For tourists it is just one of countless opportunities to stop and take a snapshot of the beauty of UVA’s well-manicured grounds.  But for Taylor Harris, the author of the recently published essay The Veil, the sights, sounds, and feel of Poe Alley represents something that is not so apparent to the naked eye.

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It should be noted first and foremost, that The Veil is a work of nonfiction.  Poe Alley it turns out is not only a place of beauty and celebrated history, but also the scene of acts of racism and bigotry that took place during the time the author was an undergraduate at the university.  These actions are made even more personal because they were directed upon the author’s friends.

This short essay chronicles Harris’ return to Poe Alley and depicts the landscape through the eyes of the “unveiled” who can see a tree for a tree, as well as through the eyes of the “veiled” who can only look around and be reminded of past injustices, and in this way, a tree becomes a metaphor for something much more painful.

As the author comes across a piece of paper tacked to a wall which reads “Tradition is among the most distinctive hallmarks of the University experience”, Harris writes:

I can never know this tradition.  This tradition is for the unveiled, for those who can see a silverbell tree for what it is.  For the rest of us, its leaves become mangled with roots of university history that have choked our necks when we’ve needed air the most.

The Veil is being published at a time when our views about race in America are being challenged on both a personal and national level.  Taylor Harris’ essay is an important and powerful statement that needs to be added to that discussion. 

The Veil by Taylor Harris is published by Hypocrite Press and is available online here on a print-on-demand basis.  $5.

Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday 

[Author’s note:  Throughout The Veil, the essay is divided in places by lines from the Billie Holiday penned tune “Strange Fruit”, one of the very first songs anti-racism songs ever written.  I’ve included a rare taped live performance of the song as sung by Billie Holiday as an added feature above]

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