Built From the Fire On Tour

I'm taking the story of Greenwood across the country

May 12, 2023

Built From the Fire releases on May 23! Order your copy today if you haven’t already.

The other day at the Black Wall Street Liquid Lounge, a great coffee shop in Greenwood, I handed the final hardcover version of Built From the Fire to one of the women featured in the book. She was thrilled. Adriana, a young police reform activist based in Oklahoma City, told me she’d never been in a book before. I told her to go ahead and flip to the index, find her name, and read her part of the narrative first.

Watching her scan over the words, her smile growing bigger with each sentence, I realized how rare the moment was. I haven’t really seen people react to my writing since I was sharing my short stories during show and tell in elementary school. At my college newspaper, my words stared dispassionately back at me on the newsstands scattered around campus, which were rarely as empty as I hoped. Later when I was a blogger/aggregator, I barely wanted anyone to read what I was sleepwalking through writing anyway. When I became a feature writer, the only human connection came through an occasional email from a reader, some faves on Twitter, and my hope that my story would land on Longreads.

This moment at the coffee shop felt different. It was real, tangible, a little bit unpredictable. The kind of experience that’s been quietly being buffeted out of all of our lives since around the time the iPhone dropped, and now seems at risk of disappearing completely with the rise of artificial intelligence.

But I digress. I’m not on the tech beat anymore.

I want this year and this book launch to be about those real moments. So I’ve spent a lot of time and energy organizing a national book tour for Built From the Fire. I hope to see you in person and share a little bit of the world of Greenwood with you in a way that can only be captured face-to-face. Writing is a solitary experience, but books are communal. They create a shared intellectual space for all of us to inhabit.

Here’s some info about my stops, and a tweet-length pitch for why each one will be special. Please consider ordering Built From the Fire from all the great independent bookstores and museums that will be hosting me on my tour.

May 25, Oklahoma City - Oklahoma History Center

So many of the colorful facts and shocking injustices I discovered about Greenwood came from the pages of the Oklahoma Eagle. This event will celebrate the newspaper's legacy and the importance of the black press. I’m excited to be joined on a panel by David Goodwin and Sydnee Monday, both members of the Goodwin family.

May 26, Tulsa - Greenwood Cultural Center, in partnership with Fulton Street Books

Homecoming #1. This event will examine how I marry the personal with the political in Built From the Fire, as the book layers intimate family stories with dramatic historical events. By examining the past, we hope to chart a better course for Greenwood's future. I’ll be joined in a group discussion by Dreisen Heath, a former researcher for Human Rights Watch, and Stevie Johnson, a founder of the Fire in Little Africa music collective.

May 30, Washington D.C. - National Museum of African American History and Culture

Put “Smithsonian lecturer” on my tombstone. I really can’t believe this one is actually happening. I’ll be talking with John W. Franklin, a retired Smithsonian administrator whose grandfather B.C. Franklin helped defend Greenwood from white legal incursions after the massacre. Many descendants of other Greenwood families will also be present in the audience. This will be a very special event.

June 1, New York - Greenlight Bookstore

Homecoming #2. I’ll be doing a brief reading, then discussing the book with Atlantic staff writer Hannah Giorgis. Hannah actually helped me break out of the tech-journo bubble when I was working at The Ringer, and she edited one of my first articles about race and history. This will be a fascinating look back at how Built From the Fire was born.

June 8, Savannah, GA - The Book Lady

Savannah has a fantastic literary scene and I’m excited to tap into that through this event hosted by The Book Lady bookstore. The local chapter of the Association for the Study of African American Life will be serving as an event sponsor as well. Savannah is the place where black people extracted the promise of 40 acres and a mule after the Civil War, so the people here know quite a bit about justice long denied.

June 13, Seattle - Elliott Bay Book Company

Pre-order BFTF from Elliott Bay

Much of my book centers on the power of the black press, so I’m pumped to be talking to several black newspaper publishers in different cities. In Seattle, Marcus Harrison Green publishes the South Seattle Emerald, a nonprofit news organization focused on amplifying marginalized voices in the community. I can’t wait to talk shop with him.

June 20, Oxford, MS - Square Books

Pre-order BFTF from Square Books

Built From the Fire begins not in Tulsa, but in Water Valley, Mississippi, a rural outpost near Oxford that was long trapped in the vise of the Ku Klux Klan. The Goodwin family left Water Valley for Greenwood seeking a better life, but many families stayed. I’ll be speaking with author professor W. Ralph Eubanks, whose interracial Mississippi family was among those who found a path forward in the heart of the Jim Crow South.

June 22, Birmingham, AL - Thank You Books

Homecoming #3 (I’m not from Birmingham, but Montgomery is close enough). What makes this event extra cool: I'll be in conversation with Ashley M. Jones, Alabama's amazing poet laureate and the author of the poetry collection Reparations Now! You can guess where this conversation is headed.

There’s more cooking, but this will get us started for the year. Hope to see you and your people on the road. Please share with those who may want to join in on the journey.

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