Reflections on Book Publication & Confederate Symbolism in New Orleans

Speaker expresses deep gratitude to the interviewer for a generous blurb placed on the book’s front cover.
Notes a five-year friendship with the interviewer, praising the interviewer’s expanding readership and impact.
Acknowledges the interviewer’s busy schedule and appreciates the time taken for this conversation.
Feels overwhelmed by the public response during the first few days of release—“unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.”

First book: a poetry collection published in 2016 while still a 2nd–3rd-year graduate student.
- Published by a small, largely single-person press (“Right Bloody Publishing”).
- Limited public profile at that time.
Current book: released by a major trade publisher (e.g., Little, Brown / Random House / Penguin level).
- Much broader publicity machinery and readership reach.
- Contrast highlights how scale and infrastructure shape an author’s experience of publication.
Ethical reflection: never take readers for granted—many talented writers work for years without a wide audience.

Worked on the project for four years and was uncertain how it would be received.
Uses a vivid metaphor: feels like a dog riding in a car with its head out the window—
- Wind flapping the jowls = exhilarating public attention.
- Unable to pull head back in = simultaneous joy and overwhelm.

Idea sparked in May\ 2017 when New Orleans removed several Confederate statues:
- Robert E. Lee (general)
- P.G.T. Beauregard (general)
- Jefferson Davis (president of the Confederacy)
Watching these removals prompted personal reflection on growing up amid Confederate iconography.
Key autobiographical details:
- Majority-Black city contained more tributes to enslavers than to enslaved people.
- Daily life landmarks named after Confederates:
- Robert E. Lee Boulevard used to get to school.
- Jefferson Davis Highway used to reach the grocery store.
- Middle school: Robert Mills Lusher (Confederate leader).
- Parents’ current street named after a slaveholder who owned 150 enslaved people.
- Childhood field trips to plantations where tour guides never mentioned the word “slavery.”
Central question: “What did it mean that this was the cultural and physical infrastructure of my city?”

Symbols ≠ “just symbols”: they represent stories societies choose to honor.
Chain of influence articulated:
1. Symbols & memorials embody stories.
2. Stories harden into collective narratives.
3. Narratives inform public policy.
4. Public policy shapes material conditions and inequality.
Important nuance: Removing a statue of Robert E. Lee will not by itself close the racial wealth gap, but it is one piece in a broader “ecosystem” that produces contemporary inequities.
Echoes the interviewer’s prior scholarship on how narrative and policy interact (implicit connection to previous lectures or works).

How did New Orleans—an overwhelmingly Black city—come to be filled with monuments to enslavers?
Who inside the city is resisting or “pushing back” against these commemorative choices?
These questions become the investigative and narrative spine of the new book.

Memory politics: which histories are memorialized vs. erased.
Responsibility of writers/scholars to contextualize symbols within systems of power.
Gratitude and humility as ethical stances: recognizing audience, lineage of activism, and the labor of small presses.

Publication year of poetry collection: 2016.
Length of time spent writing current book: 4\ \text{years}.
Month & year of statue removals: \text{May}\, 2017.
Number of enslaved people owned by the individual after whom parents’ street is named: 150.