Summer of 2017 found me reading voraciously around considerations of race – whatever that might really be – and the legacy of America’s original sin. I have been increasingly fascinated by the Civil War and both its pre- and after-maths over the past ten years or so. A few years back, an up and coming blogger at The Atlantic ran a series of posts documenting his immersion, as a Black American, into the history of that period. His name: Ta-Nehisi Coates. I became a big fan. The publication of his Between the World and Me sparked an interest in James Baldwin, and I was lucky enough to catch I Am Not Your Negro in Berkeley the week it was released. That led to a near-obsessive consumption of Baldwin. read more