Reflections on an unexpected audience

an excerpt from my new LitHub essay

Hey buds, the paperback of Learning in Public is out and doing its thing. I had a great conversation with Chris Hayes last week — look out for that podcast drop soon. And there are a couple of fun events coming up for Bay Area folks (see below). I thought I would send along this essay today, which goes into one of the unexpected audiences for the book and what that teaches me about writing, audience, and control. Hope you enjoy. And thanks for spreading the word about the paperback and maybe ordering one for someone in your life. Without further ado, the essay…

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Whenever a writer sits down to put words to paper, at least when publication is the goal, their intended audience looms like specters through their subconscious. Is this the right structure that will pull the reader along? Is this the right tone? The right story through which a fresh idea can be communicated?  

I’m a White mother, who wrote very personally and vulnerably about race in post-George Floyd America. Specifically, I wrote a nonfiction book—which people kindly say reads like a novel—about the unfinished project of school integration in this country. I send my two White daughters to a Black-majority, “failing” school in our neighborhood, and I wrote about that experience, and also made a larger journalistic case that it is time for White families to take the lead on integrating public schools—the foundation to our fragile democracy.

I went into the hardback publication of Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America From My Daughter’s School with eyes wide open. I knew progressives, even my own neighbors in Oakland, might be offended; I make an unflinching argument that avoiding Black and Brown majority public schools perpetuates structural racism. I also knew Black and Brown readers might be offended at my inevitable missteps and annoyed by my painstaking self-examination. People might have very valid questions about my motivation for writing such a book: ally theater in the extreme? Career advancement? Money? In other words, I knew I had to be prepared for a range of public reactions.

What I didn’t expect was such a warm and thoughtful embrace by religious communities.

Upon publication last year, I immediately heard from synagogue leaders, Baha’i book clubs, Quaker and Mennonite reading groups, and a myriad of other Christian churches—all eager to make sense of my book through a theological lens. One of the reviews that felt most honoring came from a Christian publication.

This was touching and also a bit discombobulating. I consider myself agnostic. I live in an interfaith cohousing community, so I’m consistently exposed to “people of faith,” but I never join their Bible studies and only rarely have I dropped in on a Buddhist sangha. I grew up in Colorado Springs in the 80s and 90s, which was the heart of toxic evangelical Christianity, so I come by my skepticism of organized religion honestly.

But here was organized religion, in a sense, saying: we embrace you. We see what you’re up to here. And we’re in it with you.  

There’s really no feedback more dear for an author…

Read the rest at LitHub.

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And some cool news! I set up an Examined Family Bookshop situation here. I’m still building it up, but you can find a bunch of the incredible books I’ve discussed over the months and years, all in one pretty, organized place. If you buy one of the books through the Examined Family Bookshop, a little commission goes straight to our pooled giving circle. As you might remember, we donate to an organization of our interviewee’s choice in honor of their labor answering five questions on Fridays. Everybody reads! Everybody wins!

And hey, if you’re in the Bay Area, I’ve got two fun IRL events coming up! I’ll be at the Berkeley City Club with the amazing Alicia Simba (friend, fellow Barnard alumna, and Oakland public school teacher) on Wednesday, 9/7. Tickets here.

And then on Monday, September 12th, I’ll be at the Napa Public Library thanks to Bookmine, talking about Learning in Public. Register here.