Overview

The police murders of two Black men, Philando Castile and George Floyd, frame this searing exploration of the historical and fictional narratives that white America tells itself to justify and maintain white supremacy. From the country's founding through the summer of Black Lives Matter in 2020, David Mura unmasks how white stories about race attempt to erase the brutality of the past and underpin systemic racism in the present. Intertwining history, literature, ethics, and the deeply personal, Mura looks back to foundational narratives of white supremacy to show how white identity is based on shared belief in the pernicious myths, false histories, and racially segregated fictions. White supremacy insists white knowledge is superior to Black knowledge, and this belief dismisses the truths embodied in Black narratives. In James Baldwin's essays, Mura finds a response to racial distortions and a way for Blacks and other BIPOC people to heal from the wounds of racism. Mura attends to the persistent trauma racism has exacted and lays bare how deeply we need to change our racial narratives to dissolve the myth of Whiteness and acknowledge the stories and experiences of Black Americans.

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David Mura is a poet, writer of creative nonfiction and fiction, critic, and playwright. He is author of A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing and the memoirs Turning Japanese: Memoirs of a Sansei and Where the Body Meets Memory: An Odyssey of Race, Sexuality, and Identity. He is coeditor, with Carolyn Holbrook, of We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (Minnesota, 2021). He lives in Minneapolis. David Lee Huynh is an actor based in New York City. He has appeared onstage Off-Broadway and across the country as well as on film and television.

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