Yes, this novel was largely conceived during the sixty-two-day sit-in at Nashville’s Tennessee State Capitol. And yes, this protest produced hundreds of arrests under frivolous charges that dissolved shortly thereafter, and far more instances of brutalization, which proved harder to erase and linger with many of us still. If any faith in institutional justice remained in me—after living in America as a Black person with the misfortune to both study, and live through, historical moments of spectacular racialized violence—my time at The People’s Plaza would have killed it.
So if you also sense an undercurrent of rage in this novel, you are not wrong. But it is not bitterness. Bitterness is anger with nowhere to go. Bitterness and resignation are close and tempting cousins. Anger with a target is Rage, and Rage is sister to Hope alone. We rage because we do believe things can be better, by fire if necessary.