Everything Must Go

A unique artistic tribute to a Chicago neighborhood lost to gentrification: “Kevin Coval made me understand what it is to be a poet” (Chance the Rapper, Grammy winner and activist).  Everything Must Go is an illustrated collection of poems in the spirit of a graphic novel, a collaboration between poet Kevin Coval and illustrator Langston Allston. The book celebrates Chicago’s Wicker Park in the late 1990s, Coval’s home as a young artist, the ancestral neighborhood of his forebears, and a vibrant enclave populated by colorful characters.   Allston’s illustrations honor the neighborhood as it once was, before gentrification remade it. The book excavates and mourns that which has been lost in transition and serves as a template for understanding the process of displacement and reinvention currently reshaping American cities.   “Chicago’s unofficial poet laureate.” —NPR