A Talking Book

A live concert in my hometown of Montgomery will explore how the themes of Built From the Fire stretch from Oklahoma to Alabama

I grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, the town where contradictions are etched into the city seal. I took field trips to Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Jr. fought to spark black freedom, and the First White House of the Confederacy, where Jefferson Davis fought to extinguish it. I attended classes in a building that once served as the city’s sole black high school, surrounded by mostly white classmates who wore the Rebel flag on their T-shirts. The city’s swirling hypocrisies were not just dizzying–they were nauseating. My goal was always to get out. 

But you can’t escape where you’re from. And being born in Montgomery, I see now, was a gift. This place foisted a certain amount of unwanted wisdom on me about our nation’s knotty racial history. Those lessons allowed me to move to Tulsa, another city of contradictions, and write about it as if I’d been born there instead. In these two towns, unlike many places in America, you cannot hide from the past. 

This Friday, I’m excited for the chance to explore the legacies of my old home and my adopted one at the same time. At Montgomery’s Capri Theatre, I am helping to host a live concert, dubbed Built From the Fire: A Talking Book. The evening will combine music, spoken word, photography, and intimate discussions about the parallels between these two places. A team of artists and intellectuals from both cities have contributed their time and talent to make this happen. Here’s a taste:

While Montgomery and Tulsa are often defined in the public consciousness by the traumatic events in their history, we’re going to spend the evening talking about creation rather than destruction. Working on this project has allowed me to view my hometown with the same warmth, love, and generosity that I tried to bring to Greenwood when I arrived there. 

The event kicks off at 7:30 p.m. at the Capri. Tickets are $15 and include a signed copy of the book. You can purchase a ticket online here or at the door. 

Thanks to close third, a Montgomery-based arts organization, for spearheading this ambitious project. 

For those not in Montgomery, I’ll be sharing more here in the newsletter before the year is out about some of the community-building work I’ve been doing with close third and how it could be adopted for other projects in other cities. Forging local bonds outside of a political context is, I think, the key to relearning how to care for each other. I’m hoping we can figure out the path forward on this front together.