They Not Like Us
They Not Like Us
Ruminations on the nature of despotic people, how they operate with a ruthlessness par excellence, and how the conditions they create affect art and the world.
“Where you gonna go? Where you gonna run? Where you gonna hide? Nowhere. Because there’s no one like you left.”
— Body Snatchers (1992)
I have to say this before it becomes illegal to express:
The ways in which tyrannical government officials and extremist Americans have halted and reversed the forward movement of this country terrifies me.
The backlash against progress and the successful attempts to drag us back to when white supremacist capitalist patriarchy could operate largely without any interference (a project that billionaire-owned media has been complicit in with their unspoken, but obvious mandates to not call a thing a thing) makes me glad that I don’t have children, who would have to suffer under a system that our Ancestors barely survived—that we barely survive. And even that survival can be speculative.
What do we do when injustice is prevailing?
Activists take it to the streets. Strategists put their heads together. Artists create purposeful art. All of these are necessary. None of them are foolproof.
Those of us who consider ourselves left on the political spectrum are really good at articulating our visions of a better world. But we’re not so good at practical strategy or the political maneuvering required to get the visions implemented. We’re hindered by our adherence to a kind of instant and unassailable purity—which may be gratifying, but is also hallucinatory and self-destructive. By the nature of our morals and principles, most of us are not willing to do whatever it takes to ensure that our hopes and dreams for a fair, peaceful, and verdant society become reality. We have boundaries that we’re unwilling to cross.
But they not like us. Despite what they purport from their porches and their pulpits, our opponents have neither morals nor principles; and they have no boundaries. They do only what’s expedient. In their hearts, there is neither love nor graciousness: They would sacrifice their own parents and their own children to any gods with an appetite for flesh (which means all of them) in the pursuit of power. These are people who are angered by joy. They are more than willing to abandon their humanity, be hypocrites, contradict themselves, weaponize identity and religion, rally behind the unqualified, cut their own noses, spite their own faces, shit on walls, break the law, use violence, be on the absolute wrong side of history, and, most importantly, wait to achieve their goals.
All of the horrors happening on the planet right this minute? Right-wing zealots set that shit in motion more than 50 years ago (with very milquetoast pushback). They are nothing if not the champions of the long game. And make no mistake about it: In ways that appear to have a sociopathic foundation, they consider all of this a game. Of thrones, as it were.
I used to wonder how democratic societies could be toppled and why dictatorships rose up so easily in their place. I used to think situations like that happened in the dark of night, during the aftermath of great cataclysms, via rogue military operations or large-scale revolts. Now I know that it happens rather unremarkably, bit by bit, a chip here and a chop there, with subtle and outright encouragement from a myriad of actors, at high-noon on Sunday, along the course of business-as-usual, in full cooperation with the Average Joe, as millions watch on—some in horror, some in glee: the horrified feeling too powerless, too incompetent, or too scared to do anything effective about it and the gleeful celebrating prematurely because they haven’t figured out that the same flaming sword they were praying for will, in the end, slice their throats right along with everybody else’s.
All who don’t hear? Must feel.
Tyrants are popular, beloved even, because they promise their cults the same thing that Satan of the Bible swears to give his: permission to be their worst selves; to engage in unlimited exploitation, uncontained avarice, unrestrained gluttony; to give a fuck only about self; no cap on any impulse or urge, no matter how depraved; endless gaslight, infinite rape, perpetual war, wanton destruction; a funny-mirror that reflects them back at themselves at twice their normal height; no fear of ramifications or repercussions; the end of accountability—all under the banner of a “freedom” measured not by how much good one is allowed to engineer, but by how much havoc one is permitted to wreak; where “uninhibited” is code for “I can finally be as openly dangerous as I want to be.” A non-society. Anarchy.
Cultists are designed to be double-crossed, but they don’t care. Delusion dictates that as long as they get to purge before their final good-bye, they might die in excruciating agony, but, damn it, they will also die happy!
I don’t know if the arc of the universe bends towards justice or if it simply bends toward whomever snatches it in their direction. I also don’t know if the majority of human beings really want to live in the wicked world of despots. But I do know that those that do are tireless and deadly in their pursuit of it. And those of us with visions of a less savage Earth face the conundrum of coming up with a suitable offense/defense to deal with these murderous brutes without becoming murderers ourselves.
In the meantime, the State kills activists. Agents sabotage strategies. Citizens ban artists. These unrelenting things together can cause us to give up hope, to believe that no matter how hard we try to build something just and sustaining, malevolent forces—through military might, subterfuge, or Republican/conservative/right-wing/centrist appeals to maintain the status quo or at least to slow progress to a pace that’s indistinguishable from a standstill—will simply destroy it. And so we will lose, for generations likely, until we stop playing Candyland and learn to play better chess (at the risk of becoming what we despise); and then, eventually, get rid of this gameboard altogether—if we have both the heart and the wisdom.
It’s all so overwhelming. It’s enough to make us ask: What’s the point?
In the midst of an abiding sorrow, I was given the blessing of attending the Bronx Book Festival on June 8—not as an author, but as a reader. [Shout out to Witness subscriber Bill (I hope I’m remembering your name correctly), who also attended the festival and came over to say hello and had really kind things to say. It was nice meeting you, Bill. And thank you! EDITOR’S NOTE: His name is Jim. I never forget a face, but I’m terrible with names. My apologies! -RJ] Did you know that there’s only one—ONE—bookstore in the entire Bronx? This travesty comes by way of the misconception that the people of The Bronx—which is to say, Black and Brown people and/or those living at, near, or below the poverty line—can’t or don’t read; and more: don’t like to read; that The Bronx symbolizes a space that is neither literate nor literary, so bookstores in The Bronx are unnecessary and will fail due to lack of the community’s financial support.
I had the chance to fellowship with one of the amazing organizers of the event, publicist, writer, and entrepreneur Saraciea Fennell, the founder of The Bronx Is Reading. She told me, tearfully, that she will likely not be able to continue to put on the festival because of the loss of donors and sponsors. Speaking to The City, she said:
“‘A lot of sponsors have just said no because they don’t believe that there are readers in The Bronx. They don’t believe that people are going to attend the book festival. They don’t see the value in it. And then this year, the excuse was ‘we’re short-staffed’ — which, I’m short-staffed,’ said Fennell, also noting that there were no Bronx elected officials in attendance. ‘You have a whole company of employees. Are you really short-staffed? Or is it that you didn’t want to pay your workers to come out and work in an area where you feel like the payoff wouldn’t be right? That’s really what it is.’”
This is, no doubt, a part of the volcanic backlash we’re seeing from the dominant classes in response to marginalized groups striving for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This reaction is neither novel nor mysterious. It has been happening in this country for centuries. It’s the inevitable result of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, or any type of hierarchical thinking, which deludes people into believing that their own survival relies upon the annihilation of the basic rights of others. This is how empires are built and sustained. Millions of dirty hands are required to do all this dirty work. Which is why we have to face the fact that we cannot rely on the good sense or goodwill of those in power—for they have neither. Thus, the most visionary among us must draw up the blueprints for an us-sustaining model and we must all support those efforts.
Whether it’s the abolishing of affirmative action and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs; the shattering of voting rights; the snatching-away of bodily autonomy; the banning of books; the shuttering of bookstores; the defunding of libraries, festivals, and public schools; the rise of illiteracy; the proliferation of false information; the firing or exclusion of marginalized people in high, influential, or pivotal positions; social media algorithms burying progressive perspectives; the institutionalization of ignorance; the contamination of the ecosystem; the militarization of police forces; the defense of billionaires’ wickedness; the housing-price crisis; the criminalization of homelessness; mass incarceration; the corruption of the Supreme Court, Congress, and the presidency; the bombing of Black and Brown nations—it’s all connected. It’s all a part of the same devious scheme to make existence itself totalitarian; and to keep us confused, exhausted, ignorant, divided, and defeated so that we’re in no position to prevent it.
The burning of art—actually or metaphorically—has always been at the heart of fascist schemes because autocrats know that the key to maintaining their power is in severing our access to history and denying us the tools that develop our critical thinking, creativity, and empathy. It’s an old plan, too: Remember bonfire of the vanities, Nazis burning books, or how the United States made educating enslaved Black people illegal and punishable by death?
I ask again: What do we do when injustice is prevailing?
At the Bronx Book Festival, author and journalist Robert Samuels took part in a panel discussion called “Voices for Change.” During that discussion, he said something that I really needed to hear. He reminded us that though we might have plenty-reasons to despair (and we do) and the hardest of times are yet ahead of us:
We’re entitled to give ourselves a moment to catch our breaths, rest, and regroup. We are, after all, human beings. But then, we have to return to the difficult work. No matter the threat, we must never, ever surrender!
By any means necessary—
Activists: Keep resisting! Dancers: Keep dancing! Painters: Keep painting! Singers: Keep singing! Thinkers: Keep thinking! Writers: Keep writing!
And as Ancestor Curtis Mayfield once sang:
The main reason I love literature so much is because more than any other medium, literature makes me think.
In particular, being an artist producing literature at various intersections of marginality makes me think. With books, both the imagination and intellectual inquiry are limitless. I read books to be entertained, of course. But I also read books to be amazed, to be challenged, to be made more intelligent, more observant, more wise, more discerning, more kind, more liberated—which is to say: more loving.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about this question:
I think about this in relation to how the gatekeepers of art sometimes treat identity as a trend. Inspired by their own desires as well as market forces (and by “market forces” I mean catering to a populace that’s thirsty for stories that, in some way, affirm their centrality, superiority, innocence, and bigoted notions about The Other in the hopes of making a ton of money from doing so), these gatekeepers seek artists that fit aesthetically whatever the majority deems fashionable at the moment.
This has been happening for a very long time. Ancestor Toni Morrison, for example, talked about how the publishing insiders and readers were hungry for stories by Black writers that conveyed and confirmed a particular kind of Black posture and pathology. In a 1987 PBS NewsHour interview with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, she said:
“The eagerness with which publishers and people in the book industry were interested in books by Black people that said: ‘Tell us how angry you are. Let us see your anger. Tell us how terrible it has been for you.’ There was a sort of sly encouragement to expose the horrors of being ‘the victim',’ which some people played into. But it was like feeding the vampire with one’s own blood, instead of describing a complicated, extraordinary survival life—which doesn’t mean you wipe the slate clean and all the Black people are heroic (and there was a mood of that). But you have what I regard as some of the most complicated, interesting, mysterious people in the world. A whole group of them. And they need to be revealed for what that life is. Not simply to reveal and educate or even play into the hands of the yearning—what used to be a yearning—for the expressions of guilt about white people.”
To give a modern example of this: Institutions were anxious to find Black artists and thinkers (or non-Black people with analyses of Black culture and sociopolitics) in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. It was a rare moment in American history where the country, after sustained international prodding, began to feel a tad guilty about its own behavior—a horror put on global display by former police officer Derek Chauvin. Of course, that was only momentary. Once the world moved on from the concern, regret, and shame it felt over Derek's cowardice and savagery, it also moved on from Black artists and thinkers.
In 2020, Black was “in.” In 2024, it’s basically “out.”
But lucky for these identity-trendsetters and trend-followers, there was then a rash of anti-Asian assaults and murders in the wake of Donald Trump's bold and vocal bigotry against Asian peoples as he seemed to have encouraged the storming of the Capitol in 2021. Again, people ran to support Asian artists, believing that would absolve them of any responsibility for the fanaticism and brutality of their fellow citizens, some of whom were their own family members.
When the anti-Asian sentiment faded from the headlines after Trump lost the election kicking and screaming and the people who tried to overthrow democracy were arrested and sentenced (a pyrrhic victory), the country found its next identity group to promote and embraced women when the demonic wing of the U.S. Supreme Court stripped people of their bodily autonomy. It was as though folks were under the impression that their complicity, misogyny, transphobia, and related hatreds could be hidden behind the receipts that proved they purchased a book, record, or ticket.
You can pretty much predict which marginalized artists are going to be trending next based on which community’s imminent suffering is the kind that our society deems most sympathetically in-style.
During these moments, the gatekeepers also choose which of all of the trending marginalized artists will be “The One” to represent each community, almost exclusively. The hope is that the other marginalized artists will be envious, jealous, and perhaps even vindictive toward “The One” chosen, ensuring that unity remains a pipe dream.
It’s a seductive proposition as it appeals to a deeply human impulse toward selfishness. There are a lot of benefits that come with being “The One.” And there are some people who believe that growth, artistic or otherwise, is only attainable via competition—and not, say, contemplation or community. Capitalism creates a reality in which life is primarily a corporate enterprise, compassion is a flaw, bloodthirst is a virtue, and all living things are reduced to a means to a sadistic end. Marginalized artists are encouraged to fight amongst ourselves about why each of us are more deserving than the other because each of us is incentivized to think that we’re better than the other. It’s an ingenious coercion because it’s nearly impossible for an artist who is purposefully, purposely starved to turn down a meal—even if it was prepared by unclean hands and the food is poisoned.
Sometimes artists feel that we have no choice, then, but to submit to the State’s and our fellow citizens’ exacting and extracting gazes—if we wish to make a living with our art, that is. We might want to create something larger, something that might actually help to free ourselves and/or somebody else. But to make enough money to be, at least, comfortable, this system motivates us to maintain this as our essential question, central thesis, and stated purpose. As Morrison alluded:
How entertaining can we make our pain for the descendants of the Roman coliseum?
This is a function of what author and educator Irvin Weathersby describes as an open contempt, where the very material of the country regards us with such a deep and lasting scorn that it shapes all national constructs, including fame and acceptance. There are second-by-second negotiations that marginalized people must make when we live in immediate proximity of our oppressors. We must decide whether to assimilate (as much as possible) or resist—when the former is certainly easier than the latter. There is a price to both visibility and invisibility. But only one of them is a betrayal.
Whose story are you?
You are your own story.
So, what would you like to say?
And after you’ve left this mortal coil, what would you like for your legend to be?
Despite what we’ve been taught, art isn’t frivolous; it’s a requisite aspect of human evolution, the very thing that makes us, us. And the sad truth is that artists who are attempting to resist cannot do so alone. Artists need accomplices. Audiences can be just that if they have the courage to not wait for a tragic thing to happen to a people of a particular identity before deciding to support their work. They can refuse to wait for an appreciation, cultural, pride, or history month or holiday to support artists from marginalized communities. They can resist the urge to wait until their egos and their guilt are marketed to. They don’t have to wait until an artist dies. They can go to a bookstore, gallery, library, museum, or street fair to seek and find.
Art sometimes soothes the soul; but sometimes, art disturbs it, too. We often prefer the former to the latter. And that’s because we are afraid of life and don’t understand that both are required if we wish to remain grounded, decent, gracious people.
There is a concerted effort to get us to relinquish our humanity while pretending to be in possession of it. Almost all of our technology is designed to help us see each other as something less, something unreal—which is to say: to not see each other at all. And there is a relatively simple way for us to prevent that from happening:
Read, beloved.
Read.
This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour
“From the award-winning and bestselling author of Black Buck: A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second-class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.
Despite the odds, Sweetmint, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life—school, university, and now a highly sought-after apprenticeship with the Northwestern Hemisphere’s premier inventor, a non-invisible man belonging to the Dominant Population who is as eccentric as he is enigmatic. But the world she has fought so hard to build after the disappearance of her older brother comes crashing down when authorities claim that not only is he well and alive, he’s also the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere.
A manhunt ensues, and Sweetmint, armed with courage, intellect, and unwavering love for her brother, sets off on a mission to find him before it’s too late. With five days until the hemisphere’s big election, Sweetmint must dodge a relentless law officer who’s determined to maintain order and an ambitious politician with sights set on becoming the next Chief Executive by any means necessary.
With the captivating worldbuilding of N. K. Jemisin’s novels and blazing defiance of Naomi Alderman’s work, This Great Hemisphere is a novel that brilliantly illustrates the degree to which reality can be shaped by non-truths and vicious manipulations, while shining a light on our ability to surprise ourselves when we stop giving in to the narratives others have written for us.”
“Mateo Askaripour’s This Great Hemisphere is a wildly imaginative novel, bursting with cinematic fervor. The world-building here is meticulous and astounding. The characters are so well-realized that they haunt the heart, motivate the mind, and shake the soul. The story itself strikes the perfect balance between wisdom and warning. I can’t help but to think that the spirit of the great prophet Octavia Butler hovers over This Great Hemisphere. And quiet as it’s kept, Mateo Askaripour just might be that level of oracle, too. This is a fiery must-read.”
—Robert Jones, Jr., author of The New York Times bestselling novel, The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award
Forgive Me Not by Jennifer Baker
In this searing indictment of the juvenile justice system, one teen in detention weighs what she is willing to endure for forgiveness. Now in paperback.
All it took was one night and one bad decision for fifteen-year-old Violetta Chen-Samuels’ life to go off the rails. After driving drunk and causing the accident that kills her little sister, Violetta is incarcerated. Under the juvenile justice system, her fate lies in the hands of those she’s wronged—her family. With their forgiveness, she could go home. But without it? Well . . .
Denied their forgiveness, Violetta is now left with two options, neither good—remain in juvenile detention for an uncertain sentence or participate in the Trials. The Trials are no easy feat, but if she succeeds, she could regain both her freedom and what she wants most of all: her family’s love. In her quest to prove her remorse, Violetta is forced to confront not only her family’s grief, but her own—and the question of whether their forgiveness is more important than forgiving herself.
The Sexy Part of the Bible by Kola Boof
Following in the footsteps of her idols Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, Kola Boof asserts her own literary prowess with a chilling sociopolitical love story.
Set in modern West Africa, Europe, and the US, and featuring the kind of heroine readers rarely get to encounter in popular culture—beautiful charcoal-skinned Eternity, a spirited and diabolical young African hellcat whose life is stigmatized by a heart-stopping secret—The Sexy Part of the Bible is an erotically astute novel filled with mystery and adventure.
Enveloped in the arms of a domineering Fela Kuti–type rap star and revolutionary named Sea Horse Twee, Eternity finds herself miraculously surviving several African rebellions—and in the interim, she powerfully unmasks the science of cloning, which becomes a powerful metaphor in the story.
Written with the lush musicality of North African classics, The Sexy Part of the Bible is guaranteed to stay on your mind long after you’ve put it down.
Victim by
“Javier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background—murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activity—can be a key to doors he didn’t even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer.
As a college student, Javi embellishes his life story until there’s not even a kernel of truth left. The only real connection to his past is the occasional letter he trades with his childhood best friend, Gio, who doesn’t seem to care about Javi’s newfound awareness of white privilege or the school-to-prison pipeline. Soon after Javi graduates, a viral essay transforms him from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his ‘unique perspective.’ But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game. Once Gio’s released from prison and Javi offers to cut him in on the deal, will he play along with Javi’s charade, or will it all come crumbling down?
A satirical sendup of tear-jerking trauma plots with a tender portrait of friendship at its core, Victim asks what real diversity looks like and how far one man is willing to go to make his story hit the right notes.”
Solitária by Eliana Alves Cruz
“The first work of translation on the Alchemy list: a raw, propulsive novel about a mother and daughter who work as live-in maids for the rich, and the tragedy they unwittingly bear witness to.
Mabel has been staying in the Golden Plate—the most expensive building on the block, in an unnamed city in Brazil—for almost her entire life. Yet her presence there is merely tolerated: she inhabits a miniscule room with her mother, Eunice, who alongside Mabel provides round-the-clock attention and care for the wealthy family who lives there. As Mabel grows up, her dissatisfaction with the forced smallness of her life becomes difficult to bear, and she is driven to work towards new possibilities for herself.
Eunice does the best that she can—uneducated, and with a daughter and ailing mother both depending solely on her, her life is a series of limitations. She moves through the rooms of the penthouse suite in silent servitude, and though Mabel is ashamed of this invisibility act they’ve both perfected, the era of slavery is still fresh in the country’s consciousness, and Eunice thinks it best not to dwell too hard on such things. But when tragedy strikes, and a little boy dies, Eunice must decide if she can face the indifference and injustices of the ruling class she has spent so long orbiting.
Told through direct, agile and evocative prose, Solitária is a liberation novel of the most rousing order. Through the book’s awareness of space and whose presence is permissible, the world of the Golden Plate unfurls, and an unflinching portrait emerges of modern-day Brazil, its legacies of colonial violence haunting rooms across the country, both big and small.”
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
Now a Hulu Original Series
“Riveting, fearless, and vividly original” (Emily St. John Mandel, New York Times bestselling author), this instant New York Times bestseller explores the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of New York City book publishing.
Twenty-six-year-old editorial assistant Nella Rogers is tired of being the only Black employee at Wagner Books. Fed up with the isolation and microaggressions, she’s thrilled when Harlem-born and bred Hazel starts working in the cubicle beside hers. They’ve only just started comparing natural hair care regimens, though, when a string of uncomfortable events elevates Hazel to Office Darling, and Nella is left in the dust.
Then the notes begin to appear on Nella’s desk: LEAVE WAGNER. NOW.
It’s hard to believe Hazel is behind these hostile messages. But as Nella starts to spiral and obsess over the sinister forces at play, she soon realizes that there’s a lot more at stake than just her career. Having joined Wagner Books to honor the legacy of Burning Heart, a novel written and edited by two Black women, she had thought that this animosity was a relic of the past. Is Nella ready to take on the fight of a new generation?
“Poignant, daring, and darkly funny, The Other Black Girl will have you stressed and exhilarated in equal measure through the very last twist” (Vulture). The perfect read for anyone who has ever felt manipulated, threatened, or overlooked in the workplace.
Loca by Alejandro Heredia
“From Lambda Literary Award–winning author Alejandro Heredia comes a spellbinding debut about intersectionality, enduring friendship, and found family set at the turn of the millennium in 1999, following two Afro-Caribbean friends as they journey beyond the confined expectations of their home country in the Dominican Republic and begin new lives in New York City.
Sal and Charo, two best friends from Santa Domingo, Dominican Republic, arrive in New York City and dream of making the United States their new home—but for very different reasons. Charo left Santa Domingo to escape the life of domesticity that was all but guaranteed for women like her, but soon finds herself in the exact situation she tried to avoid: partnered to a controlling man, mother of a young child, and working long hours as a cashier. Sal on the other hand, fled Santa Domingo after an unspeakable tragedy, hoping that the distance would allow him a fresh start. But trauma keeps him in its grips, and he’s unable to move on.
With both friends feeling the same pressures in New York that forced them from their homes, a chance outing at a gay bar introduces Sal to Vance, an African American gay man whose romantic relationship with Sal challenges him to confront the trauma of his past. Through Vance, Charo befriends Ella, an African American trans woman, and Ella’s refusal to be who or what society dictates she should be inspires Charo to reckon with the role she’s grown comfortable in. Sal and Charo soon find themselves part of a queer intersectional community who disrupt the status quo of gender politics and conformity, allowing both to create the family and identities they’ve always longed for.”
Black Women Taught Us: An Intimate History of Black Feminism by Jenn M. Jackson, PhD
“This is my offering. My love letter to them, and to us.
Jenn M. Jackson, PhD, has been known to bring historical acuity to some of the most controversial topics in America today. Now, in their first book, Jackson applies their critical analysis to the questions that have long energized their work: Why has Black women’s freedom fighting been so overlooked throughout history, and what has our society lost because of our refusal to engage with our forestrugglers’ lessons?
A love letter to those who have been minimized and forgotten, this collection repositions Black women’s intellectual and political work at the center of today’s liberation movements.
Across eleven original essays that explore the legacy of Black women writers and leaders—from Harriet Jacobs and Ida B. Wells to the Combahee River Collective and Audre Lorde—Jackson sets the record straight about Black women’s longtime movement organizing, theorizing, and coalition building in the name of racial, gender, and sexual justice in the United States and abroad. These essays show, in both critical and deeply personal terms, how Black women have been at the center of modern liberation movements despite the erasure and misrecognition of their efforts. Jackson illustrates how Black women have frequently done the work of liberation at great risk to their lives and livelihoods.
For a new generation of movement organizers and co-strugglers, Black Women Taught Us serves as a reminder that Black women were the first ones to teach us how to fight racism, how to name that fight, and how to imagine a more just world for everyone.”
The United States Is Governed by Six Hundred Thousands Despots by John Swanson Jacobs
“Lost on the other side of the world since 1855, the story of John Swanson Jacobs finally returns to America.
”For one hundred and sixty-nine years, a first-person slave narrative written by John Swanson Jacobs—brother of Harriet Jacobs—was buried in a pile of newspapers in Australia. Jacobs’s long-lost narrative, The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots, is a startling and revolutionary discovery. A document like this—written by an ex-slave and ex-American, in language charged with all that can be said about America outside America, untampered with and unedited by white abolitionists—has never been seen before. A radical abolitionist, sailor, and miner, John Jacobs has a life story that is as global as it is American. Born into slavery, by 1855, he had fled both the South and the United States altogether, becoming a stateless citizen of the world and its waters. That year, he published his life story in an Australian newspaper, far from American power and its threats. Unsentimental and unapologetic, Jacobs radically denounced slavery and the state, calling out politicians and slaveowners by their names, critiquing America’s founding documents, and indicting all citizens who maintained the racist and intolerable status quo.
Reproduced in full, this narrative—which entwines with that of his sister and with the life of their friend Frederick Douglass—here opens new horizons for how we understand slavery, race, and migration, and all that they entailed in nineteenth-century America and the world at large. The second half of the book contains a full-length, nine-generation biography of Jacobs and his family by literary historian Jonathan Schroeder. This new guide to the world of John Jacobs will transform our sense of it—and of the forces and prejudices built into the American project. To truly reckon with the lives of John Jacobs is to see with new clarity that in 1776, America embarked on two experiments at once: one in democracy, the other in tyranny.”
Wings of Red by James W. Jennings
“An inventive and stylish debut written by a Black educator, Wings of Red is a clear-eyed, funny, imperfect, and observant work of autofiction that grapples with the absurdity of the New York City educational system as a substitute teacher—that, in the end, reads as an ode to the city itself
June Papers is a twenty-eight-year-old MFA grad with a felony record, ‘the classic young, Black and gifted American misfit.’ He’s also a substitute teacher. He’s also homeless. With dreams of becoming a writer, June endures a host of trials and dilemmas as he reluctantly realizes mentoring and teaching might actually be a path forward for him.
Wings of Red is driven by June’s unique narrative style, a propulsive voice that intimately and vulnerably guides readers through the condemned external reality of a Black educator’s personal and professional world falling apart, and coming together again.
Populated by a host of true-to-life characters who are attempting to realize their dreams despite precarious professional and financial realities, Wings of Red elucidates the fallacy of the American dream while serving as a reminder of how powerful and necessary autofiction can be. Directed at students and educators but written for any audience, Wings of Red is an inspiring and poetic tour de force and an unexpectedly necessary ode to New York City that features a texture, velocity, and immediacy that speaks to the author’s authentic and lived perspective.”
The Stone Home by Crystal Hana Kim
“A hauntingly poetic family drama and coming-of-age story that reveals a dark corner of South Korean history through the eyes of a small community living in a reformatory center—a stunning work of great emotional power from the critically acclaimed author of If You Leave Me.
In 2011, Eunju Oh opens her door to greet a stranger: a young Korean American woman holding a familiar-looking knife—a knife Eunju hasn’t seen in thirty years, and that connects her to a place she’d desperately hoped to leave behind forever.
In South Korea in the 1980s, young Eunju and her mother are homeless on the street. After being captured by the police, they’re sent to live within the walls of a state-sanctioned reformatory center that claims to rehabilitate the nation’s citizens but hides a darker, more violent reality. While Eunju and her mother form a tight-knit community with the other women in the kitchen, two teenage brothers, Sangchul and Youngchul, are compelled to labor in the workshops and make increasingly desperate decisions—and all are forced down a path of survival, the repercussions of which will echo for decades to come.
Inspired by real events, told through alternating timelines and two intimate perspectives, The Stone Home is a deeply affecting story of a mother and daughter’s love and a pair of brothers whose bond is put to an unfathomably difficult test. Capturing a shameful period of history with breathtaking restraint and tenderness, Crystal Hana Kim weaves a lyrical exploration of the legacy of violence and the complicated psychology of power, while showcasing the extraordinary acts of devotion and friendship that can arise in the darkness.”
Everything and Nothing at Once: A Black Man’s Reimagined Soundtrack for the Future by
“For readers of Heavy, Punch Me Up to The Gods, and A Little Devil in America, a beautiful, painful, and soaring tribute to everything that Black men are and can be.
Growing up in the Bronx, Joél Leon was taught that being soft, being vulnerable, could end your life. Shaped by a singular view of Black masculinity espoused by the media, by family and friends, and by society, he learned instead to care about the gold around his neck and the number of bills in his wallet. He absorbed the ‘facts’ that white was always right and Black men were seen as threatening or great for comic relief but never worthy of the opening credits. It wasn’t until years later that Joél understood he didn’t have to be defined by these things.
Now, in a collection of wide-ranging essays, he takes readers from his upbringing in the Bronx to his life raising two little girls of his own, unraveling those narratives to arrive at a deeper understanding of who he is as a son, friend, partner, and father. Traversing both the serious and lighthearted, from contemplating male beauty standards and his belly to his decision to seek therapy to the difficulties of making co-parenting work, Joél cracks open his heart to reveal his multitudes.‘I learned that being Black is an all-encompassing everything...To be Black, to be a Black man in the era I grew up in, was easily everything and nothing at once.’
Crafted like an album, each essay is a single that stands alone yet reverberates throughout the entire collection. Pieces like ‘How to Make a Black Friend.’ consider challenging, delightful and absurd moments in relationships, while others like ‘Sensitive Thugs All Need Hugs’ and ‘All Gold Everything’ ponder the collective harms of society's lens.
With incisive, searing prose, Everything and Nothing at Once deconstructs what it means to be a Black man in America.
I’ll Give You a Reason by Annell López
“The vibrant stories in I’ll Give You a Reason explore race, identity, connection, and belonging in the Ironbound, an immigrant neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey. A young widow goes on her first date since her husband’s death and finds herself hunting a bear in the woods with a near stranger. An unhappy wife compares her mother’s love spells and rituals to her own efforts to repair her strained marriage. A self-conscious college student discovers a porn star who shares her name and becomes obsessed with her doppelgänger’s freedom and comfort with her own body.
Annell López’s indelible characters tread the waters of political unrest, sexuality, religion, body image, Blackness, colorism, and gentrification—searching for their identities and a sliver of joy and intimacy. Through each story, a nuanced portrait of the ‘American Dream’ emerges, uplifting the voices of those on its margins.”
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice by Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa
“A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd’s life and legacy—from his family’s roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing—telling the story of how one man’s tragic experience brought about a global movement for change.
The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice. But long before his face was painted onto countless murals and his name became synonymous with civil rights, Floyd was a father, partner, athlete, and friend who constantly strove for a better life.
His Name Is George Floyd tells the story of a beloved figure from Houston’s housing projects as he faced the stifling systemic pressures that come with being a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the context of the country’s enduring legacy of institutional racism, this deeply reported account examines Floyd’s family roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his schools, the overpolicing of his community amid a wave of mass incarceration, and the callous disregard toward his struggle with addiction—putting today’s inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with Floyd’s closest friends and family, his elementary school teachers and varsity coaches, civil rights icons, and those in the highest seats of political power, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd’s America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world.”
Magic Enuff by Tara M. Stringfellow
“God can stay asleep / these women in my life are magic enuff”
An electrifying collection of poems that tells a universal tale of survival and revolution through the lens of Black femininity. Tara M. Stringfellow embraces complexity, grappling with the sometimes painful, sometimes wonderful way two conflicting things can be true at the same time. How it’s possible to have a strong voice but also feel silenced. To be loyal to things and people that betray us. To burn as hot with rage as we do with love.
Each poem asks how we can heal and sustain relationships with people, systems, and ourselves. How to reach for the kind of real love that allows for the truth of anger, disappointment, and grief. Unapologetic, unafraid, and glorious in its nuance, this collection argues that when it comes to living in our full humanity, we have—and we are—magic enough.
In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space by Irvin Weathersby, Jr.
“A stirring journey into the soul of a fractured America that confronts the enduring specter of white supremacy in our art, monuments, and public spaces, from a captivating new literary voice
Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country’s landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma.
Weathersby takes us from the streets of his childhood in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward to the Whitney Plantation; from the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues lining Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to the location of a racist terror attack in Charlottesville; from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota to a Kara Walker art installation at a former sugar factory in Brooklyn, New York. Along the way, he challenges the creation myths embedded in America’s landmarks and meets artists, curators, and city planners doing the same. Urgent and unflinchingly intimate, In Open Contempt offers a hopeful reimagining of the spaces in which we can pay tribute to our nation’s true history.”
It’s wild when you become a subject on Snopes.
I never thought I would, but wow. I can remember when people said that I was lying about this and accused me of plagiarizing James Baldwin’s words. No matter what I said or what proof I showed, people were committed to thinking the absolute worst things about me. When I asked them if they could provide the source for where Baldwin actually wrote or said this, they couldn’t produce any evidence whatsoever. So instead of saying that (or god forbid, apologizing!), they would just insult me and then block me. Sigh. Situations like that are the why I will never fuck with social media ever again.
I get why people want these to be Baldwin’s words, though. I mean who would give two shits about them if they knew a regular dude like me said them as opposed to somebody as iconic as James Baldwin? And also, Baldwin has given so much to me. He paved so many paths. He laid so many foundations. It’s a compliment that anyone would think that something I said was actually said by him. Because of that, Baldwin and I will be forever linked—which I am eternally grateful for.
But the truth matters.
I hope this isn’t too much of a bubble burst for people. Many thanks to Snopes.
From Snopes:
Claim:
James Baldwin said, “We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”
Rating:
Misattributed
About this rating
Context
It wasn't James Baldwin who said this, but essayist and novelist Robert Jones Jr., who used to write online under the moniker @sonofbaldwin. He wrote and posted these words on X (formerly Twitter) on Aug. 18, 2015.
For years, social media users and article writers have shared a quoted they have attributed to gay Black author James Baldwin.
Besides spreading on Reddit, Threads and X, the quote has appeared on the social media platform where people share the books they read, Goodreads, as well as in articles. This quote only started to spread in the second half of the 2010s, however, and searches for Baldwin's writing reveal no such quote.
That is because in reality, author Robert Jones Jr. — who, like Baldwin, is Black and gay — is the one who wrote and posted these words on Aug. 18, 2015, on his now-defunct X account (formerly Twitter), @sonofbaldwin.
Remember when I told y’all that a street vendor bookseller in Harlem was selling my book, but I couldn’t remember his name? I just found him!
His name is Danté Péläyō and the name of his shop is The Divine Styles Pop-Up. Be sure to support him and his business. His stand is located on the corner of West 125th Street (Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard) and 7th Avenue (Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. Boulevard) at Africa Square.
This might have nothing to do with art and politics. Or maybe it does.
I recently found out that someone I grew up with passed away. I still don’t know how or why. I’m not certain I want to know. But I do know that Ancestors are not supposed to be younger than you.
His name was Le-Sean, but everyone called him Sean, “Sha,” or “Fatt Sha.” He was as street as they come. A down-ass Brother raised in the same bricks as me, he knew the rugged side of life intimately. But none of that seemed to have affected his heart. He was a genuinely nice person. Just plain nice in a world where nice is exceedingly rare and ridiculed when it manifests (particularly in Black men). Nice in a society that gave him every reason not to be.
When most of the other kids were dutiful to their programming and defining their “normalcy” and denying mine by calling me all sorts of “faggots,” “punks,” and “sissies,” Sha never once—not never—called me out of my name. All he ever did was show me extraordinary kindness—publicly and privately. As a child, that made me suspicious because I had grown accustomed to abuse. But as an adult, I realize that his kind of community was what saved my life.
Like everybody else, Sha had his triumphs and his stumbles. He and I lost touch after I left the projects. But I had to return earlier this year and when I did, I ran into him. Can I tell you: That Brother showered me with love, talked about how he heard that I published a book; he said he saw me on TV, was proud of me, happy for me, and glad that I “made it out.” The whole time, he smiled from ear to ear. I believe that was in March.
That was the last time I saw him.
I was thinking about him randomly a day or two before I heard the news of his passing. I was trying to remember when we first met. I think it was on the playground one summer afternoon when I was about 8 or 9 and he was about 6 or 7; I can’t fully recall. But I do remember that the next time I saw him, he was in front of his building dancing to one of those regional R&B hits that barely anybody outside of New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Newark, or Philly had ever heard of. Was it “Over Like a Fat Rat”? “Give Me Your Love”? “Just A Touch Of Love”? “Watching You”? “Mama Used To Say”? “I’ll Do Anything For You”? I can’t remember exactly. But I know it was something from that groovy family.
Clearly, joy had been part of his portion from young. I’d like to think that he popped into my head because that was his way of reaching out to let me know that though the distance between us now is greater than ever before, not a damn thing has changed in terms of the condition of his courage.
This loss is exceptionally painful because Sha was, as they say, one of the good ones. Evil lurks everywhere—in homes, in streets, in schools, on stages, in precincts, in boardrooms, in governments—but it was Sha who had to go?
Death has very bad aim.
My sincerest condolences to his wife Chirahe, his children, and the rest of his family.
Sha, may the Ancestors welcome you with the greatest love, joy, and fanfare. And may we always reminisce over you.
And may you, dear reader, always be cherished.
Blessings upon blessings,
Robert
Recommended Listening
“Shoulda Known Better” by Janet Jackson
“They Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar
Reckon True Stories Podcast with
and“Fight the Power” by Public Enemy
“They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)” by Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth
“Black Butterfly” by Deniece Williams
Recommended Reading
Race, Racism, and American Law by Derrick Bell
“Should Biden Arrest the the Conservative Supreme Court Justices?” by
“‘Lynchings in Mississippi never stopped’” by DeNeen L. Brown
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
“‘American Fiction’ Could've Been Great” by
“The Silent Epidemic of Premature Death in Black Men” by Nina Harawa
The Blackness of Black: Key Concepts in Critical Discourse by William David Hart
“The Supreme Court just legalized Presidential crime” by
“For the Love of Black People” by
Howard University Convocation Address, 1995 by Toni Morrison
An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love by Sonya Renee Taylor