Book News!
Every writer goes through the process of figuring out their ever-elusive “voice.” Where do you fit within the crowded field of other writers? You sort through not just what to say but how to say it. This can be particularly difficult for academics, because as a professor once told a doctoral student, “We make people boring.” I don’t know if we (academics) necessarily make people boring, but we definitely train them to communicate in a way that doesn’t fit the vernacular of most of our acquaintances. The people we want to read and share our work are busy and typically not nearly as read-up on a subject as we are, so if reading our work proves to be a labor I can appreciate the person who struggles through a couple of pages of our book and eventually opts for eight hours of Last Chance U instead (which never disappoints btw).
The art of translation is something we writers are constantly learning—typically through trial-and-error. For example, I once wrote an editorial for my local newspaper, and I was advised to write it at a high school sophomore reading level, the supposed reading comprehension level of most Americans. No idea if that was true or not, but I did as I was told because I am a rule-follower.
Fast-forward a year later when I was teaching actual high school sophomores, and only then did I realize what it meant to translate all of my fancy book-learning for fifteen and sixteen-year old’s (and presumably a sizeable portion of this paper’s East Tennessee readership). It should come as no surprise that they couldn’t grasp as much as I thought they should, and that’s no knock on them, because they were bright kids. But, expectations versus reality has played itself out in every class I’ve ever taught, primarily because the instructor (**pointing at self**) began with a “no pain, no gain” mentality when what was called for was the slow, patient way of translation. My book is an effort to translate.
Know Your Place: Helping White, Southern Evangelicals Cope with the End of The(ir) World (Cascade, 2021)
So, about the title. This is not a brushback pitch despite the appearances of high 90s chin-music. You’ll just have to take my word that I’m not trolling the communities that have formed me.
Know Your Place examines the three communities—white, southern, and evangelical—that have shaped my racial imagination. Each community has blind spots that overlap with or reinforce the others, insulating myself and others from other narratives, making it difficult to conceive of anything different than the dominant, white evangelical world of the South.
When that world is challenged, rejected, or simply questioned it can feel like nothing short of the end of the world. If you’ve been shaped by these communities and you want to understand your place in this changing world, with precisely zero references to Michael W. Smith, then this book is for you.
If you’re a busy parent or professional, then I wrote with you in mind. If you know very little about the histories and issues surrounding the current conversations on race and racism, and if you’re the kind of thoughtful reader that wants bite-sized bits to chew on without being lost the next time you pick up Know Your Place to read again, then this book is for you.
In the next few weeks I’ll be providing updates on the book, as well as posting new content. If you want to know about book giveaways, discounts, chapter titles, endorsements and the release date, then be sure to subscribe here.
(© 2021, Justin Phillips)