Irvin Weathersby Jr. is a Brooklyn based writer and professor from New Orleans. His writing has been featured in Guernica, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, and a BA from Morehouse College and has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.

You can find him at irvinweathersby.com or on Instagram: @irvinwrites.

On a sweltering  July day, in the Carriage House on the St. Joseph’s campus in Clinton Hill, Irvin sat down for a conversation with Tim Coover, a Foundry Fellow, Writer’s Foundry Review editor, and a former student. Over coffee and chocolate croissants, they discussed many topics related to Irvin’s forthcoming memoir: art, politics, the value and the danger of museums, and how to be a citizen of this contradictory country.

Tim Coover (TC): All right, so, Irvin Weathersby, welcome! Thank you for agreeing to have a conversation with us, and congratulations on your upcoming book!

Irvin Weathersby (IW): Thank you, man, I appreciate it!

TC: “In Open Contempt” comes out January 2025, is that correct?

IW: Yes. January 7th, 2025 specifically.

TC: Interesting. That date chosen quite purposefully, I’d imagine.

IW: I mean, you know, we were going to do it in the fall, but we decided to avoid the [Presidential] Election and all of the big books that come out in the fall, typically. But we’ve got a rough five months or so ahead, and we just kind of wanted to avoid all the noise and give everyone the chance for a kind of fresh start in the new year.

TC: Yea, and let’s fervently hope it’s only those five months, and the U.S. doesn’t somehow elect a wannabe dictator and self-styled God-Emperor—knock on wood or whatever your preferred superstitious ritual, right? But I am kind of curious now: do you think a book like this and some of its themes hit differently depending on the political climate or the outcome of this election, or do you think the questions it raises are fairly timeless and evergreen? (Also, if you don’t want to talk too much about the political aspect I respect that; just let me know.)

IW: No, it’s fine. Look, I think if Trump were to get [re]elected, I would definitely be louder. I think the book would find a ready audience of people who are really upset and really trying to figure out a way forward through that moment. But I think it also does play if it goes the other way, and just in general. There are a lot of opinions in this book, of course, not even about Trump, but about the Presidency, and about different American institutions and about white supremacy, and white supremacy is, sadly, evergreen.

TC: That makes sense. So I guess  I’m also curious about, not just the climate that the book is gonna land in, but also the climate and the moment that shaped it. I’m really interested in your process here  and how this book came about. You open with a very interesting, tense scene where you confront and have a conversation with, several… let’s call them “activists”... who were staking out and guarding a Confederate monument in New Orleans. And I wonder if you start there, if that’s your lead-off hitter, because that was a kind of inciting incident or catalyst for this project? But, shortly after that, you also talk about a much earlier moment, a school trip to Monticello, where you say you “first became convinced of the power of museums”. So I guess I’m asking:  was there one kind of epiphanic, crystallizing moment where you realized not only, like “I’m writing a book” but “I’m writing this book,” with these particular themes and throughlines? Or did this book emerge somewhat organically, out of a series of encounters and interactions, out of a long experience grappling with how to respond to a museum and how to exist  in a public space?

IW: Yea, I mean, I think the answer is “yes” and “no.” I think it’s both, right? Because the real catalyst to get me thinking that this is a book was in 2017, when these four monuments came down in New Orleans. And that was also a moment of returning home and trying to understand how my city, New Orleans, was really essential to the American community and the American story, and trying to interrogate that… So, then there was a realization of “wait a minute- I’ve been trying to do this my whole life.” Like, as you say, the book opens, not necessarily the prologue but the first chapter, where I’m in Monticello as a fourth-grader. And yea—that was a moment where I first realized something about this country, about who I am, about what museums are. And I’ve always been a very curious person, but that was a moment where I definitely remember being like “huh—okay; how can I articulate what I’m feeling, and how can I sort of situate myself in this space?” So being in New Orleans during my youth was a very singular, specific experience where it was absolutely a black city, almost even like a black-and-white city… I didn’t know too much else, there wasn’t that much… there is a big Vietnamese culture, for sure… but I grew up in a black culture, in a very insulated space. And once that was punctured, by going to D.C. and Monticello as a young person and being able to travel so early and see different things, that really opened my eyes in terms of what else is out there.

TC: Yea, I think it’s so interesting that you equate—and I think rightly so—Monticello and the various D.C. monuments with an awakening awareness of this White World that you hadn’t been fully conscious of before. Because I’d never really framed it to myself quite this way, but they’re kind of like monuments or shrines to the idea of Whiteness, right? Like, they’re literally made of white marble, they’re built on this grand, intimidating scale, and they’re presenting a very heroic, even hagiographic vision of these (invariably) White, rich, establishment figures…

IW: Absolutely. . .

TC: You have a very interesting moment elsewhere in the book, too, when you and your wife visit Paris, and you’re at the Louvre, looking for a particular portrait of a Black woman, trying to find some representation or some reflection of your own identity and experience in this… temple to the Western tradition, yeah, but also to colonial excess and exploitation . . .  

IW: Yes.

TC: And you also describe, in that same passage, having this emotional response or connection to the I. M. Pei pyramid in front of the Louvre. And I thought it was really interesting, how you talk about that juxtaposition, and his reframing it and inserting a different tradition into this epicenter of, like, White Western culture. 

IW: Um-hmm. I thought that was really powerful—both because of who  I.M Pei is, but also the shape and the iconography he used. Like, you see a lot of images and memes about it on social media, but I think it’s really significant to think about pyramids not being exclusive to Egypt.

TC: Yeah, the largest pyramid in the world is in Mexico, right? And the greatest concentration of pyramids in the world is not in Egypt but in modern-day Sudan, built by a people called the Kush, who were contemporaneous with, but very distinct from, the ancient Egyptians.

IW: Right—this was a structure that was used throughout many cultures, but I thought it was really interesting how that was used as an introduction to the space, but it also  kind of throws you off in terms of what you are going to see.

TC: Yea, and in a way it’s actually  a really interesting, kinda full-circle reverse-colonial moment, because Napoleon had that infamous expedition to Egypt, marveling at but also looting all these Egyptian cultural artifacts, and then for the pyramid to come back and reassert itself in this most French of public spaces . . . I mean, before it was a museum, the Louvre was literally a palace of the Bourbons, right? So, yeah, I think there’s a nice dramatic/ historical irony there.

IW: I think in a lot of ways that’s what the book is about—being able to piece together these kind of surreal contradictions, or trying to reassert the complexities of humanity, of how we can take these symbols and how they morph into different things. We’re really trying to understand what this really means to us, and not just be so passive about the world around us, right? We’re looking for any indication of what these things can suggest to us, not just about the past, but the future. So I think you’re absolutely right in terms of conjuring and invoking all those different moments in history. 

TC: And the book does a really good job of capturing that nuance and that messiness. One of the examples that springs to mind is when you visit Mt. Rushmore and also the monument to Crazy Horse, and you talk about going up there while it [the Crazy Horse sculpture] was in progress . . . I believe it’s still in progress?

IW: It’s never going to be finished in our lifetime, which is bizarre, but yes. And I’m really eager to see how the public conversation goes with this, because I think it’s a really strange thing, and I’m not even sure how many people are really aware of this. 

TC: You talk about the very mixed and sometimes contradictory opinions among Native people that you talked to—some are, saying “why shouldn’t our heroes be honored too, and the other side of the story told?” and others are like, “it’s still a desecration of a sacred site, and thus an insult to our heritage.” And they point out that the heroic statue is a very Western artistic idiom. “Man as the measure of all things” is an idea coined by Greek philosophers and embodied in the art of Phidias and other sculptors, but that’s not at all a Native ideal. I mean, it’s depicting a Native figure, for sure, and trying to provide a counter-narrative, but it’s still tapping into an artistic and intellectual tradition handed down from the Greeks. Can those things be squared? Should we even try?

IW: Those are some of the questions I’m trying to put forward. I think one of the things I enjoyed while writing this was that I didn’t know if I would arrive at answers—I think that sometimes I arrived at more questions. I would love for people to read this and really try to answer some of these questions, to really push together as a collective to ask: “What does this really mean? What does it signify? How are we fighting this fire with fire—is this the right way? Is this the right vessel? Are these the right people doing it? Does that matter?” These are all questions I grappled with.

             There were moments when I was in South Dakota and I was wondering if I should be there, if this was even my space. “Should I be part of this conversation?” And the answer is “yes”. But I’m still trying to document how I actually felt at that moment. And I think hopefully other people will also be able to claim this American story; this is still our story as well. But I think, you know, trying to be respectful, trying to be sure that you honor the wishes and the dreams of the people who are in this debate, who are living there. 

TC: And trying to acknowledge a tradition that has very different viewpoints about how to honor someone and how (or whether) to shape the land, no? At the beginning of the book, you talk about how art ideally gets its contours from, and inspires us because it somehow taps into, the natural world. Right? You trace it from the cave paintings in Lascaux up to the Crazy Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore, which I think you’d argue is a very unsuccessful attempt to marry nature and art.  And neither of us are necessarily the ones to understand or be having this particular conversation, but I think we can at least acknowledge there’s often a different Native understanding of the natural world and how we coexist with it. I don’t think the book proposes answers, but it is very interesting to think about—are those traditions compatible? Is some kind of healing possible?

IW: Yes, exactly—how do we do that? I don’t know. I mean, in a way, because our future is going to be more of a coming together; technology is pushing us that way, and climate change is bringing us closer together, so you know, our cultures might become more homogenous. I don’t know—I don’t want one culture to engulf another, but I think we need to become  more comfortable as we move through many of them and recognize their importance.

             I even think about the Parthenon. I don’t know if you’ve ever been, but going there and being in that space and thinking about all the different symbols that they were able to pull from Egypt and other cultures is really illuminating. Their thing was not “I want to steal this, I want to take this,” but they wanted to honor other cultures, to try to learn from them, incorporate and respect them.

TC: Yea, that’s so interesting, because so many of the Founders really worshiped Greek ideals, for sure, but there’s always been this strong identification of the US with Rome. And the Jefferson Memorial, and the campus at the University of Virginia, which Jefferson helped design, are both  homages to the Pantheon in Rome. It’s interesting, tracing that tradition—are Greece and Rome necessarily the two sides of the coin, and what does it mean to fall more under the influence  of one than the other?

             You talked about being in the Parthenon—there’s this weird parallel experience in London, at the British Museum. They have what they call the “Elgin Marbles”, after the British lord who brought them to England, but what they really are—it’s the frieze of sculptures from the Parthenon, just stripped off. It was done under the pretext of removing them for their own safekeeping, the classic line about “protecting” them, but you step into this room in London (and they’ve put work into making it a suitably epic space), but… it’s the Parthenon, blatantly and unapologetically looted—and Greece has been lobbying unsuccessfully for years to have those friezes returned. 

             So, I’m wondering: are these American public spaces, these grand monuments, similarly tainted? Is this architecture, that tradition, just inextricably tangled up with the brutal side of imperialism and colonialism? And if so—and this might be too big a question—are they ultimately reclaimable?

IW: Look, I think it’s a failure of imagination to suggest that they can’t be. We may not necessarily have the answer now, but I truly believe in the human mind and the human capacity for change and evolution. I think the story of the world suggests that.

             But in our current world, today, in 2024, or 2025 when this book comes out, I think that there are some things that people are going to be uncomfortable about thinking that this could change or that it should change. For example, I think about that every time I hear someone say, “Oh, what’s your Mt. Rushmore of this or that?” And this is one of the terms that I think most Americans don’t realize is inherently racist—they continue to use that as some sort of shorthand for the best-of-the best or the people we should valorize.

             So I will say “yes,” but I think it’s going to be a really uncomfortable conversation. And I will also say that there are some people who—Titus Kaphar is one, the artist whose work is on the cover of the book—his idea is that we shouldn’t blow these things up, we shouldn’t take them down; we should contextualize them. We should leave them there, but also erect other things around them, to juxtapose with them. I think that’s one approach.

TC: Yea. Titus Kaphar being famous for, among many other works, the painting of the Jefferson portrait being stripped back, and the enslaved woman is behind him.

IW: Exactly. So that’s his work, that’s the idea that, look, we can still use these things, we can still keep them up and recontextualize them. I fall somewhere in the middle of blowing things up and also kind of recontextualizing. As I said before [at the beginning of the interview], the book was inspired by the removal of some of those monuments (and for good reason), so is there some sort of calculus, should we say, look, if you were a Confederate, if you fought against this country and in defense of slavery, you absolutely have to come down; if you were a President, maybe we just recontextualize you.

TC: It’s interesting that you talk about it being a failure of imagination to say that these spaces and these ideas can’t be redeemed. And I think that’s right. But it’s also a long process. Which is what we were talking about earlier, with the Crazy Horse memorial—you were saying how it’s wild that it’s not going to be finished in our lifetime. But could you also spin it as a kind of poetic thing, that future generations might have a different and a more nuanced understanding?

             It's like the image on the one dollar bill— going back to the Pyramids, of course—the image of that last brick being lowered but not in place yet, and over it all: “annuit coeptis.” It’s not finished. I like that idea, because Americans’ standard view of history tends to be so teleological, right?  The idea that all of human political and social history has been trending toward democracy, and economic history has been trending toward free-market capitalism. I really like your counter-narrative that we’re not at the endpoint, and we’re not meant to be—this is an unfinished process.

IW: Yea, this is an ongoing process. We’re not a finished product, by any stretch. But look, while I don’t know if this is a goal of mine, or aim, it would be interesting if it were to happen that this book maybe raised some awareness for the Crazy Horse memorial, where people start to say, “Well, maybe we should actually fund this; maybe we should actually get this going within our lifetimes.” I don’t know. Is that what Natives want?

TC: If it inspires more people to talk to Native leaders, because there are disparate voices there (like the one Native artist that you ask about it, who talks about how it’s still a desecration of a sacred space) then all to the good, right? And as always, I imagine there are as many opinions as there are voices. They should all be in the conversation. 

IW: Absolutely. And to what end, ultimately? If this is erected, I would love to see the day when these [other] men are blasted off the mountain, but is that the point? Is that going to change anything fundamental? What effect would that really have? I don’t know. It’s just really bizarre, once you learn about how Mt. Rushmore was named, and that it’s named after this  random, unimportant  New York lawyer who was trying to stake his prospecting claim. And like I said before, this whole notion of continuing to keep the term “Mt. Rushmore” in our lexicon as some sort of exemplar or standard of the pillars of our society is really bizarre and depressing.

TC: Yeah, I was listening to a basketball podcast recently, and they were talking about Michael Jordan, LeBron, Kareem, etc as being on the NBA’s “Mount Rushmore.” Or people will be like “This is my Mt. Rushmore of 80s Comedies.” It’s so weird and jarring, once you know the history, to hear it used in a context like that.

IW: That’s what I mean:  so many people aren’t aware of how that offends, how it can be offensive and how it is offensive. So hopefully, the book kind of does that—gives people a chance to take a pause and allows them to reflect on why they are saying that.

             So I just want to ask you, did you know at all about the Dakota 38, whom I discuss in that chapter?

             [Referring to the thirty-eight Dakota men lynched in 1862, the largest mass-execution in US history]

TC: I did not before I read the book, no.

IW: Did it affect your understanding of Lincoln [who was President at the time and signed the order]? Maybe color it a little bit?

TC: It did color it a bit. Lincoln was always a hero of my father’s, who . . . I don’t know if we’ve ever talked about this: what my dad did? My dad was a rare books and manuscripts expert for Christie’s, so it was his job to authenticate and appraise and ultimately auction off all these rare and important historic manuscripts, like Leonardo da Vinci’s notebook (the Hammer Codex) or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and George Washington’s copy of the Constitution, with his handwritten emendations. And I know my father, as erudite and knowledgeable as he was about the underlying history, what he really loved was actually interacting with the physical documents. He used to talk about how amazing it was that you could sit with a Lincoln letter and you could see where his hand trembled or the lines ran because he was tired, he was emotional. And that kind of communion with this person who’s literally been hallowed and cast in marble but ultimately was just an individual, that connection across the centuries was one of the things that really moved him about that job. 

             So Lincoln was a hero of his, and Washington, too (an even more problematic figure now, I think), and I know Dad grappled with that in his lifetime. In one of the last major sales of his career, before he retired, he sold Washington’s copy of the Constitution, as I said, and it was bought by Mount Vernon. And I think my father had mixed feelings about it all,  because he was, on the one hand, really relieved that it went to a public institution, an educational institution, rather than private hands, where the public was not going to see and interact with it. And yet he was also thinking about what they were going to do with it, what story they were going to tell. Was it going to be simply Washingtonian propaganda, or would it be part of reframing the narrative, of understanding George Washington as a flawed human, who got thrust into a  particular moment in history? And I should say that, to my knowledge, Mount Vernon has made a concerted effort to confront the darker aspects of its history,  but that’s the question with any public institution, right? Can they move beyond triumphalism and present a more complex story? 

IW: Yea. That’s fascinating. I mean, look, this question that I ask—I think a lot of detractors of this whole idea of rewriting history are kind of saying, you know: ‘they were men of their time’ …  I think that’s a poor argument, because all of the men of their time did not subscribe to this. There are other examples, even in the Presidency. John Adams, and John Quincy Adams were both like “I’m not going to do this, I’m not going to own Black slaves.”

TC: Yea, and ‘I’m gonna speak up against it too’ Like, as a Congressman, after his Presidency, John Quincy Adams helped expose the absurdity and hypocrisy of what they called the “Gag Rule,” where you couldn’t even discuss slavery in Congress, and defended the accused in the Amistad Trial.’ Admittedly, both father and son were pretty ineffectual Presidents, but very principled particularly in their pre and post-presidency careers. 

             Also,  I should mention: the Adamses are possible ancestors of mine, on my mother’s side, so I might perhaps be a little  subjective about them.

IW: Oh, really? Interesting. To that point, we’re getting to a space with technology where I think we can actually trace everything back; it’s part of the public record now. At some point in the American experiment, I think it might make sense for all of us to kind of know that. I talk about it in the book: I had this conversation in South Dakota, when the artist said, “Look, man, that’s kind of offensive, to say you have a Choctaw or a Cherokee ancestor.”

TC: And he says, ‘I know you mean well, but… nearly every American has some Native ancestry  at this point’ 

IW: Right. But I think that’s the point—everyone should kind of take a step back and be like: ‘well, damn, I guess we all are probably related in some capacity.’ If we can trace back to Colonial times—I mean, some people can’t, some people say, my ancestors came over here in the twentieth century. But I think a lot more of us can, actually, so that’s really a part of what should happen here in America, honestly—moving forward in terms of some real human understanding of each other.

TC: Yeah, and I think that theme and that desire animates much of the book. And I’d like to kind of return to the beginning, and ask about the way this book is structured. The first chapter is called “Losers and Trophies,” and, as I said, you open with this interaction at a monument to a Confederate soldier.

IW: Yes, he was the first soldier from Louisiana killed in the Civil War.

TC: Right. And it’s being guarded by several White protestors, possibly MAGA-sympathetic . . .

IW: Surrounded by flags. . . . 

TC:  And that interaction, that conversation, goes to conflicting views of history. I wanted to ask why you thought it was important to start there, instead of, for example, one of the very powerful scenes in the book where you describe your arrest over an overblown trifle: a bike ticket?  Why did you feel it was better to start where you do, with the monuments and this tug-of-war, this debate about who belongs on a statue, who’s allowed to be in this public space?

IW: I wanted to lay the groundwork and really establish the foundation of what the experience of this book is going to be. It sets the tone for one of those really tense moments in the book—and I think the book is filled with a lot of tense moments, whether it’s with myself or with other people or with art or with some other monuments. But I think it also allows me to tell the story of New Orleans in a really particular way.  And this isn’t solely . . . my editor and I went back and forth in thinking about the way to set the stage, and I actually had the arrest scene much earlier in the book. But then we realized that, in terms of the book being part memoir, part travel, part history, art history, it would be a nice arc to tell the story of my life along with the revelations that I came across. I thought it was a good scene to set the tone and intention of this book. I also think that it’s really captivating, getting to the heart of my own experience having to have the courage to do this, which I think, hopefully, inspires other people to have the courage to do similar things. Not necessarily engaging with people that potentially mean you harm… but maybe it is.

TC: Yea, it’s not clear what their intentions are, but despite that (or perhaps because of it), it’s a very tense scene.  

IW: Yeah, and so maybe it is, but I think it’s showing you [the reader] that I was also apprehensive about these moments, but this is what our lives are about. This is what’s at stake here. If I actually care as much as I say I do, then I have to do this. And then later on, I think my great-grandmother also articulates something that was always in me, but that I didn’t realize, in terms of her approach to facing racism, and her approach to always having your head up and being proud, in spite of all the trauma that we’ve endured. And so, that opening scene is  a moment to really push back, and also tell people, “Your experience is valid.”  And you can push back against all of the hatred that’s in front of you.

TC: The hatred, but also the myopia? That was one of the things that struck me from this interaction, this scene, because you guys are debating the causes of the Civil War (among other things) and one of the other people says “The North had all the money and wanted to keep the South poor”, and you respond, “Well . . . the wealth of the South was in enslaved Africans. Let’s not leave that out of the conversation.” And then she says, “You can’t just erase history!”                     

             And that’s wild  to me because that’s essentially what we’ve been trying to do as a country and what the White ruling class has wanted to enshrine, for decades now, perhaps centuries—it's this collective amnesia. And you tell this horrible and fascinating story about North Carolina Senator Charles Stedman, who in the 1920s introduced a bill to erect a mammy statue on the National Mall. And it’s just the literal whitewashing of history. It’s so fascinating that the other side, the Civil War apologists, can apparently see that we need to grapple with our history, but they’re also only too happy to sweep this huge part of the story—the truth about slavery—under the rug.

IW: I mean, that’s the tone I’m trying to strike—the absurdity of it all. Like:  “Wait a minute, am I the one tripping? Am I losing my mind, or are you not seeing this?’ Is anyone else?” And that’s the reality, I think, far too often, that most Black Americans experience in their day-to-day lives. And even, to your point, the erasing of history, the movement to ban books, it’s like: what the fuck is happening? How do we live in these times when books like dictionaries are banned, encyclopedias are banned—it’s like, okay, that’s the erasure of history, but also knowledge. Right?

TC: Exactly. Banning Beloved, banning Maus. And I use those two examples because certain people seem particularly triggered by particular parts of history, and the idea that ‘oh, my god, our schoolkids might be made to feel not just something complex, but also something uncomfortable.’ Something akin to (historical) guilt.

IW: Yeah, and let’s say for example I’d never had that experience in Monticello; how would my life be different if I’d never been able to see that? So I think that’s important—to present the good, bad, and the ugly. I think kids are more resilient and can learn to judge and evaluate for themselves. And I think we’re doing a disservice if we’re not really giving them the true nature of history. Like, I think about Educated, by Tara Westover—have you read that?

TC: No. I know of it, but haven’t read it.

IW: It’s incredible. So, for context, she was insulated in this fundamentalist [Mormon] household, and, this is not perhaps the main thrust of the book, but at one point she relates how when she goes to college, she had never heard of the Holocaust. And just being able to walk through life without having any understanding of these pivotal moments that have shaped history, shaped our current climate, shaped our public consciousness, is really unfortunate. You are not really participating in human experience, are you?

TC: Yea, I was going to ask: “ in those circumstances, can you be a complete and responsible citizen?” But you’re asking: “can you be a fully formed and informed human if you’re not exposed to these other cultures, other viewpoints… maybe even, looping back to one of the main themes of the book, to other art?”

IW: So, I think that’s what we’re getting at. If you want to live with this isolated, restricted… myopic, as you said… understanding, I guess that’s your right. But I think it’s not sustainable… we’re seeing that it’s really not okay.

TC: Right, ‘cuz now we have these narrowed, restricted, and clashing alternate realities that large swaths of the country are living in. And if these realities are incompatible and clashing, so now, what interaction is possible?

IW: That’s the question.

TC: But I also don’t want to get too cynical or fatalistic, because I think you also show and articulate an alternative to that. Even in the interaction at the beginning, it’s tense, and you guys are framing this debate in very different ways, trying to find a common language and kind of floundering, but if there’s not exactly understanding at the end, there’s also not misunderstanding, and there’s certainly nothing like outright hostility or violence.

IW: There isn’t, and even as I walk away, one of the people and I shake hands and the other one—he wasn’t really angry. He was like, “okay, you’re cool, man—have a good day.” These interactions can, and often do, end without violence.

             So I hope we get to that place, where we can say: “I see you as a human being; I don’t see you as some sort of symbol at all—I see you as a whole person, I recognize your experience and recognize your difference.”

TC: There’s a quote, like, “An abyss cannot be crossed in two steps.”

IW: Hmm, I like that.

TC: Yea, the interaction we’re talking about reminds me of that, because the chasm is still there at that moment… a bridge hasn’t necessarily been constructed, the chasm hasn’t been filled in…. and yet, across that gulf, there does suddenly seem to be some communication, and even a moment of human recognition. Would you agree?

IW: Absolutely. And whether they change at that moment, or they change later, or they never experience some sort of revelatory change, I think it’s still worth trying. And even, going back to one of your questions about opening [the book] there, I also want to talk about where I end . . . not necessarily the epilogue but the last chapter, the last scene. I’m on the University of Virginia campus, and me engaging with the space inspires two other White people to come over and we have an exchange that I think is really illuminating, not just  in the sense of bridging a gap, but also that we’re genuinely seeing and encouraging each other.

             And you said you don’t want to be cynical, and neither do I, and I hope the arc of this book leans towards some hope. I’m not cynical about the human imagination; I think that we can do this, and I hope this book inspires people to really actively think about, “well, how can we do it?” How do we work towards reparations, how do we work towards healing, how do we work towards really honoring our public spaces? And recognizing that it’s not just about the Black American experience, it’s about the American experience.

TC: Yea, that’s definitely something I’ve been thinking about in this conversation. In a way, as a white man,  I’m an interloper in this discussion. But it’s also, as you say, it’s  so important we have this conversation—that all of us do.

IW: These are the conversations that we need to have as Americans, and if you call yourself an American, this is the ongoing conversation we’re all having. And I think that’s one thing that I’m hoping this book is about. It’s pushing people to have that experience, to see themselves everywhere. 

TC: The book is inviting a conversation, ultimately.

IW: Yes. 

TC: Yeah, I do think that comes through. And I don’t think the pervasive tone of the book is cynical, though there are moments of frustration and despair. You describe your reaction to the Kara Walker Sphinx statue [A Subtlety] in the former Domino Sugar warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. And you describe “being overcome by an intense sadness” and an urge to look away. And you even found yourself wondering if there are some images that are never meant to be seen. Which is a really interesting reaction to a work of visual art. 

IW: Yeah, exactly.

TC: But also, great art should be broad and universal enough to accommodate a whole range of emotions and reactions. And I think you do a great job using the varying responses to Kara Walker—like visitors snapping selfies as others wanted to weep, and the critics who said she should leave the idea of the “mammy” in the past—as an illustration of that.

IW: Exactly. And hopefully, Kara Walker gives me some grace to do that—look, I agree with some of those opinions or interpretations, but I also recognize that this was genius, you know? And even some of the more visceral or uncomfortable reactions may not surprise or displease her at all.

TC: Indeed. And you also talk about your reaction to this Monet painting you encountered in the Musée d’Orsay [in Paris] — you found yourself being brought in to this kind of triumphalist celebration of Frenchness, you found yourself drawn to it— and then suddenly, you saw which street it was that Monet had painted and it was the same one with that horrible little racist engraving [that you’d seen earlier]. And you find yourself pulling back, and you have a line about wanting to spit on the Frenchness, on this flawed and carnivorous idea of Frenchness, and wanting to get out of the museum. Of course, you don’t. . . But you talk a lot about that movement from anger to sadness to resolve.  

IW: Yes, but I feel at times in the book that I have to do something. The resolve doesn’t become some sort of passive resolution; I’m still searching, I’m still seeking, I’m still trying to get towards a different kind of peace. But I think you’re right. I don’t—this is even my nature—I don’t want to reside in anger and bitterness. That’s just not at all helpful. But in interrogating all these spaces and interrogating my own thoughts, I often do arrive at a clarity of some kind. That could be resolve; it could be this idea of optimism or hope. There’s so much to be encouraged by, in terms of where we are, where we’re going, and how we can continue to push.

Sometimes I think I’m too much of a centrist—I think I get this from my father. Being able to debate sometimes just for the sake of debate, but also kind of being able to see both sides and not leaning too far either way.

TC: That’s my training and my reflex, too, as someone with a background in philosophy. You want to be able to hold any conversation as a thought experiment. 

IW: Exactly.

TC: And then you interrogate it, and some obviously don’t hold up and need to be dismissed and set aside. But I get and I really respect the principle of trying not to come into a conversation with a fixed answer, and evaluating anything you hear, anything other people say, by whether it accords with what you already believe. 

IW: Yeah, yeah. And I hope the book . . . there are times when I absolutely know how I feel, and I hope there’s a balance, and there are moments where I see and acknowledge just how complicated this all is.

TC: I think the book wouldn’t have the power it does, wouldn’t be authentic—if it didn’t have both those moments, and if it didn’t acknowledge the pull towards anger and fury at the cyclical nature of it all— it would feel like it was pulling its punches.

             You make an interesting parallel between what Michael Stuart was to Basquiat and what Philando Castile was to you. And finding that commonality and that identification allows you to identify with Basquiat and commune with him as an artist and intellect. But also there’s a tragedy in this; there’s a Groundhog Day element of it, too, right?

IW: Exactly. It’s like: “How often am I hearing this story? How often am I having this conversation?”

TC: That needs to be in there, and that needs to be acknowledged, right? And there will be these brief flurries of, maybe, greater public understanding. You talk about it in the new consciousness and in the actual, concrete reforms and changes to public spaces, that happened in the wake of George Floyd, that happened in the immediate wake of Brianna Taylor. These galvanizing moments can happen—they exist—but at what cost? Does that moment of recognition, that seeing each other from opposite sides of the chasm, need to be bought with blood every time? There’s got to be an easier and less costly way to achieve that.

IW: I don’t know, man. And look . . . even with Trump’s near-assassination, the rhetoric is, “Oh, now we need to tone down the violence”. . . . Well, really? Well, who’s really stoking the violence in the first place? Who’s benefiting from it?

TC: There’s a special circle of Dante’s hell among the hypocrites for the guy who consistently led to an exponential shift in violent rhetoric in the public discourse, to then turn around and ask for restraint, to try to play the martyr. It’s the “cheetahs eating faces” kind of thing, you know? There’s a meme that’s been making the rounds these last few years where the woman is like “sure, I voted for the Cheetahs Eating Faces Party, but I never thought they would eat my face!” It’s like “what did you expect, when you pried open Pandora’s Box?”

IW: Yeah, man, I agree, and I don’t have the answer to that. And in the chapter when I’m talking about lynching, and how we can have that so readily accessible, to see someone die—often—this rhetoric of violence or this consumption of violence that we have, I don’t know, man. I don’t have the answer to that.

TC: Almost the commodification of violence, too. I recently read Chain Gang All-Stars . . .

IW: Great book.

TC: Amazing—it’s very allegorical and it’s the steroidal portrait of something that actually exists in our culture.

IW: And it’s not too far—he didn’t stretch too far. He did the same kind of thing in Friday Black.

TC: Yeah, I remember we read Zimmerland in your class, and again it’s the Spinal Tap “turn-it-up-to-eleven” depiction of the real state of our society.  It speaks very eloquently to our rather manic time. So that’s one reason I started by asking about the decision to push the book until after the election—how is the climate in which it was written and that shaped the narrative similar to, but also, in other ways different from, the climate in which it will come out?

IW: It’s a very strange thing. People have asked, how long did it take to write this book, when did it start? And I think the easiest answer is 2017, when I went back home. But honestly, I’m pulling from so much of my life, from my childhood, and things that I’ve written before this moment. And I’m thinking about what this current moment means, and will we be in the same space after the election? 

TC: Yeah, and that speaks to the depressingly cyclical nature of our current moment. In a way, some of these scenes happened in 2017, 2020, 2021, and these are flashpoint moments, then, in a way, there was a window, it seemed, where the national discourse had calmed down. Yet we’re right back in these very turbulent times again. It’s an apocryphal proverb, but that idea of “may you never live in interesting times”… I think we’re all discovering the truth of that. So some of these scenes seem to come from a very recognizable recent past, a particular moment when the temperature of this conversation was at a boil.

             But then reading this in 2024, and having the book come out in 2025 . . . we may be right back there. Or maybe we never left . . . ?

IW: Exactly—that’s what I think. We never left that space, that kind of burning room. I think we put out some fires, right? But there are still some to go. And I think that’s the idea of this book. I want to make people think “wait a minute, we still haven’t addressed all these things.” 

             I’ll give you another prime example: this is an essay that I’m going to write in the lead-up to publication. It’s kind of a promo essay, tentatively titled “The Earliest Juneteeth.” Now this is a federal holiday now; how has it been celebrated? What is actually happening, what is going on, what does this holiday seem to mean? Right now, it’s super symbolic, and this year, my kids were out of school, and I took them to the beach. And it was packed! And I thought: “Wow, okay, this is really fucking interesting! Everybody is utilizing this holiday—but how?”

TC: What do they think they’re celebrating. . . ?

IW: Yeah, and even trying to formulate, like: do you say “Happy Juneteenth?” Do you say “Merry Juneteenth?” Is this a happy or a merry occasion? How do you acknowledge this? And does it even matter, if we’re still celebrating Columbus Day? So at what point are we going to get to the true promise of what this holiday means?

             And so my anxiety about the book coming out or not coming out when it will is: Will this conversation still be relevant? Will it matter?

             And the answer, I know, is yes. I know this is my own anxiety, because we’re still in these unfinished conversations; there’s still a lot more work to be done. There are still places and holidays and institutions and ideas that need to be addressed. Reparations still have not made it into the general American consciousness; there’ve been some really good examples of thoughtful, scholarly discussions and proposals, but these have been mostly ignored or shot down out of hand.

TC: We haven’t really had a good conversation, there hasn’t been a national debate about it.

IW: No, and I think we still need to get to that place, so hopefully this book pushes that conversation. And whatever climate it arrives in . . . in terms of January 6th, and that kind of anniversary and even the 1811 uprising, which I think a lot of people still don’t know about, that’s also going to be an anniversary the same week the book is released. And it can give people an opportunity to say, “Let’s actually talk about American history; this was the biggest uprising in American history, and I didn’t even know about it.”

TC: And ironically, it’s what the woman says at the beginning, “You can’t erase history; we need to grapple with history.” It’s so interesting to me that, at least nominally, the impulse is the same, and yet the awareness is not there. 

IW: I think that we all feel that way, but some of the answers, the reactions, are not the same. And look, we can’t erase what these people [Confederate soldiers and enslavers] were, we can’t erase what they did, but we don’t need to valorize them. 

TC: And you have interesting moments when you give the biographies of the subjects of some of these statues, these avatars of White supremacy, like the Louisiana Supreme Court justice, Edward Douglas White. But you grapple with that depiction, the idea that he’s meant to symbolize the objectivity of the law, but ultimately he ends up just looking kind of vacant. But you also trace his life and his history—this is how this person ends up where he was, advocating what he advocates, and doing the damage that he did. So I did respect that decision, and I think the people you talked to at the beginning—and the people that they represent—should respect that you really are trying to engage with the lives of some of these figures. 

             For example, when you talk about the monument in the Latin Quarter to Jean Bienville, who’s generally credited as the founder of New Orleans, you also try to understand and inhabit Bienville’s life, the contradictions of this man that are, in some ways, embodied in the statue.  Because under his powdered wig and the eighteenth-century surcoat, he also has a Native American tattoo, the snake encircling his torso, which was shocking and radical to many of his contemporaries. And he did make real efforts to understand and co-exist with the Native community. Yet at the same time, he was a virulent racist and White supremacist, who really established New Orleans as a center and an engine for the slave trade. So you’re grappling with the fact that this guy was able to humanize his Native neighbors in a way that many White people of his time were not, and yet there were clear limits to that understanding. And I saw an interesting parallel there—we’ve talked a couple of times about Columbus Day, which is now, fortunately, rebranded and reframed as Indigenous People’s Day (though there’s still work to do, obviously).

IW: There’s still work to do; there are still people who happily take the day off; people who do not want to take the day off. . . .

TC: Indeed. Well, thinking about Columbus Day, it put me in mind of an interesting parallel between Bienville and Bartolomé de las Casas. There’s been a movement to say if we’re going to honor anyone from that era, maybe Bartolomé de las Casas, who wrote these really influential books [about Indigenous culture and society] and was an activist and campaigner in his day for Native rights and the recognition and preservation of their culture. But he also . . .

IW:  …showed condescension towards them?

TC: Possibly that too. I haven’t yet read the actual books in question. But he was so passionate about freeing Native peoples from servitude and bondage that he became a proponent of finding alternate sources of labor and encouraged the first slave ships from Africa. So you could have an opponent of slavery and an advocate for human dignity in this one context . . .

IW: And justifying it in another. Interestingly enough, I actually talked about de las Casas in the book. There were a couple of passages that were cut at the end [of the book], where I mentioned him as someone who had traveled with Columbus and wrote all these interesting diaries about his respect for the Natives as individuals and his interest in Indigenous culture. But that’s one of the things I want to talk about in this book; I want to make people really understand that yes, there was a push toward African slavery and away from Native decimation, but it happened concurrently and it never really benefited either, you know. So even when we talk about Lincoln and about the fact that he freed the slaves… at the same time, in the same moment, he was continuing and even accelerating the fight against the Natives.

TC: Pushing “manifest destiny”—and Wounded Knee happens in the generation immediately after Lincoln and the Civil War.

IW: It’s kind of like an active and multipronged approach, and I want people to see the connections in this, to see that “Hey, this is still the American story.” And as much as I think a lot of Black Americans—and I think all Americans—really try to situate themselves in the center of the narrative, we still have to understand these concurrent trends and how they’re all influencing each other. That’s why I say in the book that something like the Bienville statue is my favorite kind of monument to White supremacy, because it’s really complex in terms of depicting Bienville, but also the Native figure and the priest—I mean, you think, Wow. Okay, this is really getting at it; they’re not shying away from the complications of this moment in history.

TC: Yeah, instead of just centering the one experience of the dominant ruling majority at that time. But you also touch on the fact that there’s a debate: does it pay lip service to, or is it really grappling with, these multiple perspectives?

IW: That’s a good question, and I guess we’ll see what the critics say, but to that point, one of the things that really annoys me—and maybe this is a very personal thing—but when people open speeches with “Hey, we’re going to give the land acknowledgement; this is the land of the Lenape” and then they just go on and talk about whatever they’re going to talk about… Well, what the fuck is that; what does it really mean? Have you done anything by acknowledging the dispossession of the land? It’s like “Fine, but now what?” What are you, as the heirs of that dispossession, going to do about it?

TC: Saying it, as a kind of disclaimer, is not grappling with it or making any amends.

IW: Right. And I look at myself, too. Even my going to South Dakota was a step, but I’m consciously, actively, in that chapter trying to understand: Is this my place? Is this my purpose? Am I doing the right thing? Is this helpful? How is this pushing something forward?

TC: Yeah, am I a participant in the conversation; or am I a sort of voyeur or spectator to a historical injustice? 

IW: I think we all need to understand and ask ourselves that. And it’s uncomfortable sometimes. It’s still the work that needs to be done.

TC: I definitely feel like that. Me, having this conversation, as a White man; in a way I’m an interloper in this discussion, but it’s so important that we have this conversation—that all of us do.

IW: Yeah. These are the conversations that we need to have as Americans, and if you call yourself an American, this is a conversation we’re all a part of. And I think that’s one thing that I’m hoping this book is about. It’s pushing people to have that experience, to see themselves everywhere.

             And I even thought about how I didn’t go into this explicitly thinking about the book as multicultural, but at the end I stepped back and I realized how many cultures are represented in it. I’m not just talking about myself, but there’s Latin Americans here, who can see themselves in the book, there are Native Americans, there are Jewish Americans, there are obviously White Christian Americans—and how are we all intersecting in the conversation? And I felt bad because I was, like, damn, where’s the Asian American experience?— there are only a few moments when Asians are mentioned.

             Then I was reading through the book, and you brought up some moments, too, like even with my arrest—the judge was an Asian man. And I felt that in a really incredible way, that we had a silent exchange, that he was able to see me in ways that I thought were positive. 

             I wanted everybody to be able to see themselves and be able to engage in this conversation in real ways. That’s one of my intentions and whether I succeed or not is not up to me, I guess. 

TC: No, I think it does shine through. And that seems to me very apt and apropos. One of the central animating ideas of the book seems to be a need to identify ourselves in art, like in the scene where you and your wife search the Louvre for that particular portrait of a black woman. Why should the book not reflect that? We should all be able to recognize ourselves and our own aspirations within this piece of art, within the book.

IW: Exactly. So hopefully people receive that. And again, my intention is one thing and how people receive it is another. But this year, from initial conversations, it’s really interesting so far. You write, so you’ve probably had the experience where you might think people will respond to one thing, but they actually respond to something else. Or something else really sticks with them.

TC: Yea, and speaking of scenes that really stuck with and resonated with us… To go back briefly to a moment we just touched on—let me know if you find it unpleasant or uncomfortable or triggering to talk about the arrest; if so that’s fair. . . .

IW: I’m okay with it.

TC: You write very eloquently about that moment and about its resonances. It seems emblematic of what we were talking about, and that universality really comes through at that moment. Through the specificity of that experience, and the officer talking about an outstanding warrant, then coming back and saying, “Oh, you’re going to laugh—it turns out that it was a bike ticket.” And he says, “You know, we don’t even give bike tickets anymore!”

IW: And I’m like is it me, or is none of this funny?

TC: Clearly not, and you do a great job of reinforcing that with the bookends of that section. Because the story of the arrest is framed, first, with a movie you watched about Miles Davis, and a scene of Miles at a concert, stepping out between sets and having a cigarette, and he starts being harassed by a White police officer. And finally, being beaten and pinned on the ground as he tries to convince the cop, “No, no, no, I’m the guy on the marquee!” It’s the question, once again, of who belongs in these spaces, and who the authorities (whether it’s the police, the government, or the gatekeepers of the art world), are able to imagine in those spaces . . . 

             And then the other framing moment of that arrest scene is, to calm down and to cope, you start thinking about your class and what you were going to teach the next day. The Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem comes up—“We Wear the Mask.” And those two do a great job of universalizing that experience but they’re also a powerful depiction of the idea that “art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.” That we’re clinging to art in these moments. And I wonder if, first, you agree with that, but then also, is there a limit to the solace we can get, the edifying and consoling power of art?

IW: That’s a really good question, man. You know, in a way, I am suggesting that. Right? Even in the epilogue, the chapter is called “Art Makes Better Humans”—that’s a quote that I saw in this gallery in Venice. I truly believe that, even if it happens subconsciously. And I think that it happens in this passage that you mentioned.

             And I wonder whether it will help readers to think about how they cope with stress, or navigate through traumatic moments. Do they think about a song? Do they think about a poem or a work of art? Do you think about something that helps you get through; what is it that you turn to in moments of stress?

TC: Yes, I have several, I have a couple of poems stored away—whether it’s W.H. Auden or Elizabeth Bishop or Mary Oliver—and if I’m having a panic attack or something of that nature, I’ll try to think of the poem, recite the words…and it has actually worked to slow down my breathing and calm my racing mind on a number of occasions. So, I think… yeah, I think many, if not all of us, have some coping mechanism like that. And a lot of the time, it is tied up with art—not always—but I think that is a very common and a very universal reaction.

IW: Yeah, and maybe sometimes it’s a poem; sometimes it’s a song or a piece of visual art or anything— maybe even it’s a tattoo on your body.

TC: Absolutely. And solely speaking for myself, all my tattoos are extremely nerdy and literary and probably only have resonance to me. But going back to the universality, I’m thinking about you reciting the Paul Lawrence Dunbar poem to yourself, inhabiting those words in that moment in the holding cell and it reminded me of Nelson Mandela, in prison in South Africa, reciting “Invictus” to himself, telling himself “I thank whatever gods may be/ for my unconquerable soul.” 

IW: That’s interesting that you say that—I hope that comes through in the scene; I mean, I’m really glad you got it.

             One of the biggest goals of the book, too, is that I wanted to render myself in a way as unremarkable. You know, like an everyday person. Yes, I’ve had a lot of experiences that were unique. Yes, I’ve read a lot of books. Yes, maybe that comes off as smart at moments. But I want people to recognize themselves in my experiences, and not think that I’m too academic or anything like that. Even when people see the title, I don’t want people to think that this is some sort of too-erudite, academic experience, focused on things that are meaningful to two or three people who have written some sort of Ph.D. dissertation. You know what I mean?

TC: Yeah, it’s the problem of academia in general; there’s such a narrowing of focus and a narrowing of who you are speaking to. Some of my friends from undergrad have pursued philosophy, have gotten or are getting their PHDs, and they’re writing these extremely thoughtful and erudite articles about this minute point in Hegel or Aristotle—brilliant ideas, and they’re expanding the store of human knowledge, certainly—but at the end of the day, they’re writing these papers that, realistically, only a dozen or so fellow academics are going to read or could possibly understand. And I think it speaks to the cul-de-sac that academia can become. 

             Zadie Smith talks about it in her novel “On Beauty”…

IW: Oh, interesting. I’m a huge fan of her essays. Not that I don’t like her fiction; but she’s got a really smart voice and I love to hear her thoughts on where we are as a culture.

TC: Yeah, I’m reading The Fraud right now, and it’s absolutely brilliant and interestingly, perhaps surprisingly, relevant to our current moment. Anyway, one of the two rival academics in “On Beauty” is this Black right-wing thinker and he’s written this massive, best-selling, populist biography of Rembrandt, and the other has written what’s essentially a textbook, this academic treatise, on the same subject, and he is speaking only to people in that same academic sphere, with the same idiom and vernacular and vocabulary. And the other book is going . . .

IW: To the masses.

TC: Yeah, exactly. To inspire a conversation. And Zadie Smith implies it might not be the right conversation, but it’s the one that’s going to get the exposure and penetrate the Zeitgeist…

IW: I particularly enjoy reading history, but the history I love the most is when I start to see people, when I start to see humans, and sometimes even see the authors. I think sometimes historians are encouraged not to insert themselves. Well, I think that makes it more palatable, sometimes, to situate yourself in time and space, and I think that’s what I wanted to do in this book. I wanted to make sure people recognize that art history is not just for art historians. 

             I’m curious, actually, how art historians and people in the art world will respond to this. I’m not of the art world; I’m not trying to confuse anyone with that in the book. I’m not an expert; I’m just a person who’s curious.

TC: Exactly. You have asked informed questions about this, and a lot of time thinking about it. We’re all eternal learners, right? 

IW: Should be. If you’re curious, then hopefully this inspires some of that curiosity. I want young people to read it, and I want old people to read it. I want people from all walks of life to read it. 

TC: I think that’s the right approach to have, because you were talking about the idea in history (and there’s a corresponding principle in literary criticism) that critics need to take themselves out of the picture and be this abstract and objective authority. But I don’t know that that’s helpful, and I don’t know that it’s possible.  

IW: I think when you do that you’re really pushing against your own nature and your own perspective; you’re trying to shrink away from your own experience.

TC: There’s an Edmund Burke quote where he talks about how (I can’t find it right now so I’m paraphrasing) the job of a public servant is to represent the will of the people but also his own conscience, and when you set aside the latter, you betray both. 

IW: Hmm. I like that.

TC: I think that applies to art, as well, and to writing. 

IW: Yes. That’s the way I write, and that’s the way I experience the world. That’s the way I want this book to be received. Because this is not a traditional memoir; it doesn’t have the traditional Point A to Point B self-discovery type of arc. I go backwards; I go forwards. But it’s not just my story.

TC: For sure. And you were talking about not wanting to present yourself as an expert, just like an ordinary person, but even within that you can be a conduit for a conversation.

IW: Exactly. The only way you, the reader, can experience these spaces that you may never see—or maybe you can’t see them anymore because they don’t exist—is to experience the world through my eyes, but also, that’s just a point of departure. Then your eyes start to come into focus, and your experience asserts itself.

             Look, I also recognize that, as much as I want to be unremarkable, I want to be the everyday person, there are many moments in here that really could only have happened to me. Those are my fingerprint on this narrative, and I’m not going to shy away from that. And I’m not saying that anyone else couldn’t have had these moments, but that was my particular experience. You know what I mean? I see the connections in the world, and I hope that those resonate with other people and they can piece things together in their own lives.

TC: Yeah, and if you and your work, and this book, can be an instrument for that or a step along the way …

IW: That’s the goal. I will be happy if that is the biggest kind of impact for this, the fact that people can start to have a different experience, have their perspective changed ever so slightly to be more open to others, and to the symbols around the world, recognizing that you can advocate for anything, that at any moment you have a voice and how you use that is up to you. But your voice matters; your perspective matters, and you can piece together the connections. 

             One of my favorite chapters is where I was thinking about the questions—and maybe no one would have asked me: “What’s your favorite chapter?”

TC: That was one of my rejected questions!

IW: That’s funny! And I love all the chapters, but . . . one of my favorite chapters, possibly because I’m an educator, is “A Lesson Before Dying,” when I’m not trying to structure it as a lesson but really trying to get everyone to take that upon themselves, to say, let me interrogate how I learned about the world, how I learned about myself. 

             You enter the world with a perspective that is unique to you. What do you do with that? I want you to be very cognizant of the things that have shaped that perspective. What are the things you have to embrace more? And that’s going to be different for everyone. But in a way, that chapter is emblematic of the whole book.

             Look, I want you to have a different perspective; I want you to keep digging into that and go further.

TC:  Consider my thoughts, but don’t lose your own. Because you and I are both teachers, and in some way that’s the ultimate goal, that’s the Grail, to be able to hand our students the tools to teach themselves, right?

             On a related note, I did find that Edmund Burke quote, if you’re interested. . .

IW: Yeah, yeah.

TC: “Your representative owes you not his industry alone, but his judgement, and he betrays you instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.”

IW: I like that. . .

TC: Maybe I’m reaching, but I think there’s an analogy to writers as well.

IW: Well, you know, most people, we all start with the “I.” And I think sometimes people push against that. . . .

TC: I think there’s an unhelpful and almost a violent pushback against that, denying the subjective way we see the world. Because we’re never not going to be the subject of our thoughts and our own senses, right? 

IW: Right. But, whatever blinders we have, we all can be more curious and investigate ourselves and others.

TC: Yeah, and we turn towards fiction because it does allow us to step outside what Auden called “the cell of the self,” even if only temporarily. That’s one of the miraculous things about story and about literature, I think. It’s this engine for empathy. . .

IW: Exactly, and the best fiction—and I think you’ve mentioned a number of them—they really reflect reality, things that have occurred or will occur. That’s the goal of this book too.

             There are different points of entry, how you can engage with this, what it’s going to mean to you, and we’ll see; we’ll see. I’m encouraged by the response from readers so far, how they’ve engaged with it. But it’s not up to me anymore.

TC: You are a parent and I am not, so you tell me—I’ve been told there is some analogy between creating a book, being an author, and being a parent. In that you reach a certain point where you kind of have to open your hands and set this thing, or this person, out into the world now.

IW: Yeah, right? It’s like: “It’s done; I’ve done my part.” Look, I’m eager to see the response, but, this being my first book, I can’t predict yet what that really entails. What is it going to feel like if people misread some things, or read too far into this or that, or really appreciate this vs. that? Well, okay, cool! I can’t control that, and that’s okay. 

             I would love to have critics who are not interested, people who don’t like it—I think invariably there are going to be people who do respond positively—but I want all the noise; I don’t want just the cheerleaders, because I think the naysayers are going to invite the cheerleaders and even the people who haven’t heard of it to come in and say, well, I didn’t read it that way.

             So we’ll see. I would love to foster the conversation.

TC: Well, I think that this has—and it will do that, and that’s an achievement in itself. Anyway, I think that’s a great place to leave it, especially considering we’ve already said way more than will ever fit in the magazine itself. “In Open Contempt” comes out January 7th, 2025, and I encourage everyone to read it! Irvin Weathersby, thank you so much for talking with us today!

IW: My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me!

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.