Yall, if we ever needed to engage with three Cosmos, it is now. And Chanda brought us to it. Weirdos, you better come get some of this weird beautiful shit.
Deesha Philyaw established herself as one of the greatest short story writers ever created five years ago, but in The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman she has cemented herself as possibly the most soulfully entertaining writer on earth. The skill necessary to bounce readers from confessional to institutional critique to sweaty revelation is staggering. Yes, Philyaw loves these characters and place as much as characters and place can be fictively loved, but it is her care for, and ability to thwart, readerly expectations that feel wholly innovative. As Morrison wrote, the language we wield should not sweat, but my God, the readers of these characters surely will. We will spit, piss, hoot and holler up a storm. This kind of book-making should not be humanly possible with first novels. Readers everywhere will get lost, then give thanks.
Why is my cuzzo the greatest on earth, and always knocking on the screen when we need her most? There is no more consistently soulful, brain quaking writer to have ever walked this earth. Mississippi's greatest greatness. Please remember Jesmyn made us, and Mississippi helped make her. Let's all learn to write and reckon better through ON WITNESS AND RESPAIR. It is here yall.
“It is rare that creators of movements that shake the world use the memoir form to honestly and precisely explore how their will to change was created. Kimberlé Crenshaw has made a fleshy piece of theory, a foundational book for this nation, a moving memoir that will continue to build on the monumental work Crenshaw has already done. We will thankfully be feeling the work of this book for generations.”
- @kieselaymon
As more people continue to pick up their copies of Backtalker, I’m grateful to my friends and fellow backtalkers, like Kiese, who have taken the time to engage with the text and share words of praise.
Secure your copy of #backtalker today, using the link in bio or wherever you buy your books!
Very grateful to the estate of Toni Morrison and to the very alive Kiese Laymon for permission to use these two epigraphs in conversation in The Overseer Class, which really capture what so many of us feel and experience in primarily white spaces
“I tell my students, ‘When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game?”
TONI MORRISON, 2003’
“Many of us have made a life of hoping to get chosen for jobs, chosen for awards, chosen for acceptance from people, structures and corporations bred on white supremacy.
We’re hoping to get chosen by people who cannot see us. Knowing that they hate and terrorize us doesn’t stop us from wanting to get chosen.”
KIESE LAYMON, 20153
This is an American sports story about addiction and attention—one that @kieselaymon has only told to casino friends after losing his paycheck, and nearly the rest of his life.
“Casinos try to lure me into losing all my money by offering me great seats to watch the greatest basketball players on earth,” Kiese Makeba Laymon says. “They’re betting on me relapsing.”
Read more from @kieselaymon ’s personal essay on sports betting, ‘The Casino, the Court, and Me,’ at our link in bio.
Artist Deborah Roberts, @rdeborah191
A way out., 2025. Courtesy of the artist.
Vanity Fair asked me to make something about sports, casinos and late stage capitalism. So I wrote about how I saw the worst Jumpman tattoo in the history of the world in Martinsville, Indiana instead. Peep Deborah Roberts incredible art and my essay in bio.
