I JUST KEEP TALKING

The distinguished academic offers astute perspectives on America, past and present.

Painter, author of Old in Art School and The History of White People, gathers more than 40 previously published essays, framed by a new introduction and coda, reflecting her shrewd analyses of issues including race, class, and gender; history and historiography; police brutality and poverty; art, education, and politics. Painter, who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area in a family of “proud progressives,” was part of a diverse student body at UC Berkeley. “My Blackness isn’t broken,” she writes. “It faces a different way. Mine is a Blackness of solidarity, a community, a connectedness to other people who aren’t known personally, of seeing myself as part of other people, other Black people.” Her connectedness has led her to reveal “real hurt, real blood, real trauma” in her writing, whether debunking the mythology surrounding Sojourner Truth, examining the way Spike Lee reinvented Malcolm X for his movie, or uncovering the stereotypes that undermined Anita Hill. Some pieces assess the work of other historians—e.g., she critiques Eric Foner’s Reconstruction, a book she otherwise admires, for “its virtual neglect of gender.” Gender and class are central to Painter’s portrayal of Mary Quinn Sullivan, the youngest and least-known founder of the Museum of Modern Art. Throughout, Painter confronts divisive questions, such as affirmative action and reparations, about which she has this suggestion: “First every Black person should have his or her own therapist for life, because dealing with this society is enough to make you crazy. Second, every White person should have to live two months as Black.” The author has many significant thoughts about the 2016 election, which colorized voting as Black, and about the future of democracy. Painter complements her essays with her artwork.

A vibrant, insightful collection from an indispensable voice.