In Open Contempt

Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space

De: Irvin Weathersby Jr.

Narrado por: Irvin Weathersby Jr.

“An awe-striking masterpiece of love.”—Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“The sentences alone in In Open Contempt make it one of the most memorable books of the decade. But it’s the unexpected lingering and genius crafting of consequential action that makes this one of the freshest explorations of space I’ve ever read. Irvin Weathersby Jr. has made something we’ve never before seen, felt, or witnessed.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

A stirring journey into the soul of a fractured America that confronts the enduring specter of white supremacy in our art, monuments, and public spaces, from a captivating new literary voice.

Amid the ongoing reckoning over America’s history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country’s landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma.

Weathersby takes us from the streets of his childhood in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward to the Whitney Plantation; from the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues lining Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to the location of a racist terror attack in Charlottesville; from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota to a Kara Walker art installation at a former sugar factory in Brooklyn, New York. Along the way, he challenges the creation myths embedded in America’s landmarks and meets artists, curators, and city planners doing the same. Urgent and unflinchingly intimate, In Open Contempt offers a hopeful reimagining of the spaces we share in order to honor our nation’s true history, encouraging us to make room for love as a way to heal and treat each other more humanely.

©2025 Irvin Weathersby, Jr. (P)2025 Penguin Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“In language gorgeous enough to be lyric, Irvin Weathersby Jr. helps us examine some of the stone grotesquerie erected and living among us—the remainders of before, the reminders of blood. And in doing so with such care, he’s granted us this work, a new monument to gaze at. One that should be raised and never razed. One that should be seen for what it is, an awe-striking masterpiece of love.”—Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“The sentences alone in In Open Contempt make it one of the most memorable books of the decade. But it’s the unexpected lingering and genius crafting of consequential action that makes this one of the freshest explorations of space I’ve ever read. Irvin Weathersby Jr. has made something we’ve never before seen, felt, or witnessed.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

“When James Baldwin talked about being a witness, Irvin Weathersby’s In Open Contempt is what he meant. With accounts and observations equally enlightening, enraging, harrowing, and hopeful, Weathersby guides the reader through contemporary and historical spaces both public and private with an unflinching veracity. It is, in fact, when he illustrates how the borders between time and distance are artificial, and the ‘then’ and the ‘now’ are inexorably linked, that the narrative sings most sublimely. In Open Contempt is an intelligent implication and a courageous achievement.”—Robert Jones, Jr., New York Times bestselling author of The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction

You will gain a new lens on how you view art

Phenomenal book that makes you think about how you view art. It challenges you ask deeper questions and seek more understanding . I’m excited to visit my next museum to see how my perspective shifts.

Extraordinary

I was familiar with most of the art he discussed and spaces he visited but I was able to see them with new eyes and discover new layers through his descriptions and discussions. This book is also a beautiful reminder of the power of art, in all of its forms, to remind us, to move us and in these times to keep the memory and true history alive despite any revisionism that might try to diminish it. Thank you for this excellent reminder - I look forward to sharing it with friends and students.