Casey Gerald

Show them the light switch. They will turn it on. THE GREAT REFUSAL — September 15. Link in Bio. Publisher: @littlebrown Trailer: @iindividual.co Footage: @bradbarberpix Supported by: @newamericaorg , and casey.grants

READING LIST PT. 1 ⚡ . First off, heyy ;) Since blackhomeeducators reposted that Morning Joe clip, almost 12,000 beautiful new people have shown up and shown love and I really appreciate you & will try to say hey individually this lifetime. 🥹 . Second: now y’all know damn well they didn’t post no reading list on the MSNBC website 😂 . TBH I’ve been stressing out about not getting one to you sooner. Then it struck me: not many generations ago, it was illegal for our people to read or write. And yet! Did they not get and share vital knowledge? Did they not tell the story of how we had made it over, made it through? They built homes, tended to the sick, raised crops, sang, jumped the broom, delivered babies — they LIVED, and they learned a lot, and taught a lot … and very little of that “a lot” ever came from, or made it into, a book. There’s a real message for us in that. I love books as much as anybody but plz don’t worry about having not read enough to be free. . That said, the books I was referring to were: . 1) “Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920” by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham . 2) “The Souls of Black Folk” by W. E. B. Du Bois … I have since come to believe in Du Bois’s BLACK RECONSTRUCTION but Im just about to start reading it so will report back. . 3) “The Annotated African American Folktales” edited by Henry Louis Gates (and Maria Tatar) . 4) “Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom” by David Blight . 5) "A History of the Negro Race in America" by George Washington Williams (1882-83) . I will be sharing more about these books & many others, soon. Please sign up for my mailing list (link in bio) as I'm trying to build a life and community away from social media. For a whole host of reasons we can talk about. (Againnnn: Link in bio.) . . In the meantime, I hope everybody is as safe as possible, in LA and everywhere else. I’ve been thinking about that line from Ms. Lauryn Hill’s Unplugged…“oh when it rains…it don’t rain on one man’s house.” Metaphor. We’re gonna need each other. Big love. ❣️

We’re thrilled to announce The Great Refusal: A New Vision of Resistance, from Casey Gerald, acclaimed author of There Will Be No Miracles Here. A groundbreaking work of joyous dissent and stunning vision — a survival guide to a society in crisis. Publishing September 15. Reserve your copy at the link in bio. Trailer: @iindividual.co Footage: @bradbarberpix Supported by: @NewAmericaOrg , and the Marguerite Casey Foundation.

@ eagles fans 😅

yearsss ago, my (soul) sister @keishasenter told me about this new idea she was trying to help bring to life , a documentary about the black cowboy… and now it’s DONE and out ! Yall, it’s damn near a miracle for anything to get made in Hollywood , but Keisha and her team did that frfr 😭🥹🏆 thank u for remembering us country ppl lolll and being the badass you’ve always been. So proud 🫶🏾💫💫 . . Link in bio — finally a reason for you to get Peacock n whatnot ;)

new moon. new book: the great refusal ⚡️ . I was sitting here (over)thinking a caption to tell you about my second book. I got distracted by a moth/butterfly chillin on my patio. [second slide] I’m like ok, this is a sign, yes. just take it easy. 🦋I shot a video of it. I got back to my caption spiral. I read like six emails about good captions. I ate some chips, since I told myself I can’t eat lunch till I come up with a caption… . NEXT THING I KNOW, a little bird swooped down on my patio. You know what happened next. 😭 it all happened so fast. I’m still kinda sick to the stomach… BUT i got the msg: Who gives AF about your CAPTION boy just tell the people so you can finish the damn book and give it to them before the “BIRDS” eat us all alive — . SO: I am almost done with THE GREAT REFUSAL. 4 years in the making. Out SEPTEMBER 15 , 2026. The book’s dream is to help us fly away… and/or turn into gods…and/or create a world where we can chill together, safe from the “BIRDS” ♒️💞 . Please give thanks to the great Bryn Clark @callmenyrb at @littlebrown who reminded me two weeks ago: “Perfect is the enemy of out in the world.” & please sign up for my mailing list [link in bio] so we can talk & scheme ;) 🥷🏾🥷🏾🥷🏾

“I feel so real. I feel so unnecessary.” . Little Richard, inducting Otis Redding into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame… reminding everybody, starting w/ Mick Jagger, where they got their shit from. [receipts on slide 2]😅 . Like Oscar Wilde said: “if you’re going to tell people the truth, make them laugh, or else they’ll kill you.” 🔑

READING LIST Pt. 2 . Aside from “The Devil Finds Work” , this is my favorite Baldwin. “Favorite” is a cheap word I guess, so lemme say this is the Baldwin that nourishes me most as a writer and a person. This is Baldwin in the 70s (pub’d 1972). Malcolm is dead. Martin is dead, killed while Jimmy was working on his Malcolm script. Medgar is dead, killed not long after he drove Jimmy to the airport. “That man was a friend of mine!” Baldwin remembers screaming in a car in Puerto Rico, when the radio announcer broke in with news of Medgar’s assassination. . . By No Name, the Black Power movement has pushed Jimmy to the side…Eldridge Cleaver has dragged him through the mud…most importantly, though, his friends are dead. He’s trying here to see them clearly, as human beings, and to see their work and mission clearly…and he’s trying to do his work…and he’s trying to accept how sad he is and how doomed the world seems to be, without accepting defeat on either front and without being a liar or a fool. . . This cover blurb from the Atlantic actually betrays what Baldwin’s getting at in the book … all the petty , and not so petty, battles between the Great Black Figures — Martin vs. Malcolm, Hughes vs. Hurston, Baldwin vs. Wright, DuBois vs. Washington — were futile in the final analysis. Or if not futile at least they were tragic distractions from the truth that they were all “trapped in the same situation” no matter how different their escape plans seemed to be. . . I remember my junior year in college thr @yalebmu honored Elizabeth Alexander at our first Tribute to Black Women … I’ll never forget what she told us that night: “Black love is a radical act” … at the time I figured she meant like romance, and maybe she did…but not only. Love is a hard thick thing, and forces us to work through hurting each other, and disagreeing with each other, and trying to understand each other, as hard as that is and as long as that can take. And maybe more than anything, love asks that we just accept each other, accept ourselves…and give ourselves and each other a break, sometimes. It’s a long old road , but we’re gonna find the end.❣️

have you drank some water? have u moisturized , put that sunscreen on too (us too fr)? the blueberries are struggling rn and I’m allergic to a lot of fruit so like, a good orange is good for me these days. and good headphones and a good love song. I’m tryna learn how to nap , but I drove to h-town to see @thenapministry and she put me on other games and you woulda never known we were very serious ppl bc we laughed 80% of the night. It’s all good. ❣️

I really do love y’all. ❣️ . the energy is so thick right now and I know many of us are feeling besieged … by our bosses, the government, random ass people in the grocery store, ecological devastation, I mean it goes on. the violent energy is rising because the battle is already won … if they haven’t wiped us out in all this time, they cannot wipe us out. these are last ditch desperate efforts. Don’t be lured in or fooled. Don’t forfeit your inheritance — that power, that freedom, that war-time inner peace. . Let’s love each other best we can right now. and thank brother @donlemonofficial for making space on his primetime show for this convo, for us … cnn thought he needed them … thought !

Happy Birthday, Case J ✨🌞 . I lowkey like getting older, prob bc I’m an old soul and it makes more sense for me to be 90 than to be 21. BUT ppl who really really know me fr know I also have extreme little brother energy. Which I forget bc I don’t be around nobody lol. So this bday I’ve been thinking about these vids from high school … I was 15 I think … the second vid is my “big brother” Juice and our hs track team. I think I got in trouble and left off the travel team for regionals, so Juice (and Lendy) made a documentary so I could get a sense of the adventure later. You would think I died or went to jail loll…I love it. . It makes me think of one review of my first book, that said: “In No Miracles, Gerald doesn’t want to transcend his circumstances. Instead, he basks in the memory of them…Often, the book reads like an attempt to reconstitute the community, and communicate the experience, that the narrative of singularity would pluck him out of.” . It took years and a mortgage worth of therapy for me to realize I wasn’t trying to reconstitute anything for a reader. I was trying to remember, for myself. Trying to *remember myself*. Who I was before I turned into who I was “supposed” to be. Remember what real friendship and real community felt like, before anybody had clout or a network or anywhere else to go. Remember how much funnier the jokes were when nobody laughed unless you were really fucking funny. Remember how little time I spent alone, how little fear I felt, if only bc Juice & BK could fight and were my big brothers. How simple it all was. How happy we all were. Or at least entertained, and wild, and free, if broke. . . I think of that Kerouac line about Dean & that whole road crew: “Now our adventures are over…we’re still great friends but we had to go on to other phases of our lives.” That’s how it is I guess. I just miss my friends, miss my nigga Case J, some days. ❣️❣️❣️