Publishers:
Broadside Press - 74 Glendale Highland Park, MI 48203
Detroit River Press - 4632 Second Ave. Detroit, MI 48201
First Edition, First Printing Date: 1982
Scope & Context:
Song for Maya is a book-length epic poem by Dr. Melba Joyce Boyd and marks the first title Dudley Randall published upon resuming operations at Broadside Press. Co-published with Detroit River Press in 1982, the volume represents a significant moment in both Boyd’s literary career and Detroit’s Black literary history.
The poem centers on a protagonist named Maya and constructs an expansive mythic-historical narrative linking African American and Native American histories. Through a sweeping meditation on migration, colonization, slavery, and forced removal, Boyd traces imagined ancestral movement from Mesoamerican civilizations into the southeastern United States. The work engages the violent legacy of the Trail of Tears and the removal of the Cherokee Nation to Oklahoma, while also confronting slavery, racial passing, and the fraught history of miscegenation.
Deeply personal, the poem reflects Boyd’s own family history: her maternal grandmother was half Cherokee and her paternal grandmother half Choctaw—both women navigating the racialized terrain of being light-skinned in America. The long poem thus merges myth, genealogy, and political critique, positioning Black and Indigenous histories as intertwined rather than separate narratives.
The book’s title emerged organically. The protagonist did not originally have a name; however, when Boyd’s daughter, Maya Wynn Boyd, was born during the poem’s development, the naming became inevitable. In a telling family anecdote, young Maya once drew inside the book, explaining to her mother: “Well it’s my book, so I can write on it because it’s got my name on it.” The moment encapsulates the work’s intimate layering of motherhood, lineage, authorship, and inheritance.
Song for Maya stands as an ambitious literary experiment—part epic, part family archive, part diasporic mythmaking—and remains a foundational text within Boyd’s body of work and Detroit’s Black literary tradition.
Biographical Information:
José L. Garza – Detroit Artist, Illustrator, & Poet
José L. Garza is an artist and writer whose creative work has been associated with Detroit’s diverse cultural landscape. In the 1980s and early 1990s, Garza was recognized locally and nationally for his contributions to visual art and poetry, particularly within Latinx arts communities in Michigan. As a practicing social worker in Detroit, he engaged with arts organizations such as Casa de Unidad and the Latino Poets Association to advocate for broader representation of Latino artists in exhibitions, readings, and cultural programming. His work spans visual art, writing, and community engagement, reflecting a commitment to cultural visibility and artistic expression within and beyond Detroit.
Garza’s role as the illustrator of Song for Maya (1982) situates him within Detroit’s vibrant literary and artistic networks of the period, collaborating with poet Melba Joyce Boyd and Broadside Press on a project that blends epic poetry and visual interpretation. His contributions to the book’s design visually support the poem’s mythic and historical scope, adding an important artistic dimension to Boyd’s narrative work.
Resource: https://aadl.org/node/246308
