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Title details for In Open Contempt by Irvin Weathersby Jr. - Available

In Open Contempt

Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space

by Irvin Weathersby Jr.
Irvin Weathersby Jr.
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
“An awe-striking masterpiece of love.”
—Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times bestselling author
“The sentences alone in In Open Contempt make it one of the most memorable books of the decade. But it’s the unexpected lingering and genius crafting of consequential action that makes this one of the freshest explorations of space I’ve ever read. Irvin Weathersby Jr. has made something we’ve never before seen, felt, or witnessed.”
—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir
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 we share in order to honor our nation’s true history, encouraging us to make room for love as a way to heal and treat each other more humanely.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    January 7, 2025

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9780593944165
      • File size: 190214 KB
      • Duration: 06:36:16

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Weathersby deserves thanks for bringing attention to ongoing efforts to replace the sculptures, monuments, and street names that honor the racist heroes of the Civil War. While the author specializes in writing, not narrating, his sincere, pleasing tone propels stories that range from the Dakotas--Mount Rushmore and the still unfinished massive monument to Crazy Horse--to the Louvre and the Muse D'Orsay in Paris. That his text travels far beyond Dixie gives it power. That he eloquently weaves in his own story gives it poetry. This audiobook--part memoir, part travel narrative, and part investigative reporting--expertly takes on the visible markers of white supremacy, historically and currently. It leaves the listener much to think about and see with new eyes. A.D.M. © AudioFile 2025, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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