If you pick up an academic book, its author will tell you that it “interrogates” and “intervenes” in particular social forces. I prefer, instead, to meditate. My argument walks beside you, rather than renditioning you to a hole in the ground. I have no intention of burning down the village, just passing through it as flâneuse and cogitator.
A cold front has overtaken New Orleans, and it is a bold move for me to show you my book while wrapped in the insane, breakfast-stained layers one has to wear — yes, even indoors — to survive in a shotgun house.
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For more information on Eastman Johnson’s Negro Life at the South (1859), which I reprint with courtesy of the New York Historical Society, wander over here.
Join us at my book launch at The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum, sponsored by Mockly! at 7:30pm on January 11, 2025. You can RSVP here.
Above, my favorite image from Captive City. It’s a photo I took in 2022. New Orleans buckles under the weight of 4 nationalisms. A lamppost in Congo Square commemorates those four nationalisms: American domination, Confederate domination, French domination, and Spanish domination, with dates and representative images listed.
