Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?

From the publisher, "Ranging from Ta-Nehisi Coates’s case for reparations to Toni Morrison’s revolutionary humanism to D’Angelo’s simmering blend of R&B and racial justice, Jesse McCarthy’s bracing essays investigate with virtuosic intensity the art, music, literature, and political stances that have defined the twenty-first century. Even as our world has suffered through successive upheavals, McCarthy contends, “something was happening in the world of culture: a surging and unprecedented visibility at every level of black art making.” Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? reckons with this resurgence, arguing for the central role of art and intellectual culture in an age of widening inequality and moral crisis."

A lyrical collection of essays on subjects ranging from hip hop in France and trap music to afropessism as a historical mood and cafes as cultural sites, McCarthy's intellectual reach is as broad as his political comittments are deep.