After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America

After Life seeks to create a written record of the year 2020--an unprecedented year marked by mass death, grief, memory, and the spiritual power of our cultural losses.

From the tumultuous 2020 election and catastrophe of COVID-19 to the police murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, these essays explore both mass death as well as grief over individual people, including losses of beloved celebrities and politicians, from John Lewis and Ruth Bader Ginsberg, to cultural icons including Chadwick Boseman, Kobe Bryant, and Little Richard.

Hailing from a dynamic cross-section of backgrounds and intersectional identities, including race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and geographic location, After Life represent a broad swath of the American public, yet also reveals the commonality of a collective national consciousness and culture.

By exploring, reconsidering, and reinterpreting the historical significance of 2020, these revelatory narratives collectively offer a sense of unity and hope following one of the darkest years in American History.