Greetings to new subscribers and welcome to Sitting in Silence, an inspirational newsletter and podcast for writers, readers, and thinkers. The interview is a popular ongoing feature of the newsletter. I love talking to writers about inspiration, craft, and life. They never disappoint. So, from time to time, you’ll find these intimate and enlightening conversations in this space. Today’s conversation with Author Irvin Weathersby, Jr.

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

‘The goal of art is to seek out something pure and true and to convey it.’ The author of ‘In Open Contempt’ on making sense of history and his own story.

by Minda Honey

Black portraiture in an iconoclastic age

by Aaron Robertson

Faculty from The City College of New York are publishing new works and receiving popular and critical praise. The and MFA Creative Writing program has a spate of new publications from faculty. Author Irvin Weatherby, Jr., the Bernard Mendik Visiting Professor, has a new book “In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space.” The book was featured on ABC News Live Prime and has received favorable reviews, including The Philadelphia Tribune and a starred review by BookPage. Weatherby, Jr. will teach creative nonfiction for the MFA for two semesters. 

One of the biggest symbols of America is Mount Rushmore. This monument, right? But I think most people fail to realize where it's located and why it's located there. Even more importantly, who did it? It's on a sacred Native American mountain, a place that was central to their creation stories. But then you think about who did it, and it was a Klansman. The guy who sculpted Mount Rushmore was a Klansman. People were like, "Wait, really?" Like, how is that a thing? But it seeps into our understanding and our embrace of white supremacy. This whole notion of us using Mount Rushmore as a metric of excellence is really sad. We are honoring slave owners and people who viciously killed natives, and those who pillage other lands in the name of capitalism. That's what America is, I guess.

I think there's such a disinterest in education in America that it is sickening. We can't even agree on facts. It's up to states' rights to decide. Really? States can say that this is true in one state, but it's not true in another? Although these states are united, it's very bizarre. I'm hopeful for revolution. I'm optimistic. I want radical change. I think we are repeating history. We are going through a cycle of fascism and greed, and I think we're going to see a lot of states collapse. As a result of that, I think people are going to be forced back to their primal needs and concerns, but I think they're going to be forced to think about what makes us human. How do we become more human? Because we've lost that. We've given it up to technology. How can we figure out what makes us a really powerful species again?”

Full video of conversation:

How do we reckon with ongoing anti-Black racism in the United States, as represented by monuments, street signs, and schools named after slaveowners, segregationists, and white supremacists? In this debut book, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby Jr. engages curators, city planners, and artists—including Brooklyn Museum collection artists Titus Kaphar and Kara Walker—whose work considers the specter of white supremacy in public spaces. From his hometown in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward, Weathersby takes us to the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues in Virginia, the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota, and a former sugar factory here in Brooklyn. This program comprises a reading from the book, a conversation between the author and writer Robert Jones Jr., and a musical performance by Dezron Douglas and Seth Trachy.

Susan Larson talks with Irvin Weathersby, Jr., about his fascinating new book, “In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space.”

Moderated by Tanisha Mallette, Chief Content Officer and Director of Communications

Join the Black Faculty and Staff Association (BFSA) for a moderated discussion with Queensborough Community College professor Irvin Weathersby, Jr., about his newly released book, In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space.

Released January 7, 2025, In Open Contempt confronts the legacy of white supremacy in public spaces and reflects on the responsibility of bearing witness to places marked by enduring racial trauma. Weathersby has scheduled a national book tour, and this event is a unique opportunity to hear Weathersby delve into the themes, inspiration, and process for writing the book ahead of his tour at his home campus. We celebrate his accomplishment and the unique distinction of calling him one of our own!

This Black History Month event is open to faculty, staff, students, and the public.

By Brea Baker

Black books are being banned left and right. While this isn’t new, the attacks have increased in ferocity as the Trump administration wages war on Black stories, history, and leadership. One of the best ways to fight back against those who try to erase the gains we’ve won is to commemorate, learn about, and amplify Black culture. This Black History Month, we have compiled a list of books by Black authors on a range of topics and within various genres. Each of these titles offers an opportunity to reflect on how we got to this moment and what we can do to make this country a safer and more joyful place for Black people. And while these picks are available everywhere books are sold, we strongly encourage you to pick one up at your nearest Black-owned bookstore.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer Tribune Correspondent

Writer Irvin Weathersby Jr. explores America's museums and monuments in his new book, "In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space."

It's part memoir and part reflection on how our creation myths as Americans often contradict our nation's true history, according to Weathersby. He said the book tries to encapsulate that feeling of what it means to be a Black American.

ABC News' Linsey Davis sat down with Weathersby to discuss his book in more detail.

What stories do we tell ourselves about the past? How do they inform our present, and our future? Where did we learn them and what if they’re wrong? In today’s episode of Hello Monday, Jessi Hempel sits down with Irvin Weathersby Jr. to explore how we challenge existing systems, and the beliefs and ideas that prop them up.  

Irvin is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor, originally from New Orleans. His new book is In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space. In it, he explores the myths about America and its people that are woven throughout our art, our monuments, and our public spaces. And how we can go about unravelling them.

In this episode of This is the Author, meet writer and professor Irvin Weathersby Jr., author of In Open Contempt, professor and theorist Tao Leigh Goffe, author of Dark Laboratory, and journalist Adam Chandler, author of 99% Perspiration. Hear Irvin Weathersby Jr. discuss emotionally charged moments in the recording studio, Tao Leigh Goffe on the catharsis of recording a book about race and the climate crisis, and Adam Chandler on the role work plays in a sense of American citizenship.

This week, we're joined by author and educator Irvin Weathersby Jr. to discuss his new book, In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art and Public Space. We delve into the complicated legacy of monuments and art—what they represent, how they uphold systems of white supremacy, and what it takes to envision something new. Irvin also shares how his identity as a “teacher who writes” informs his work and perspective.

Irvin Weathersby Jr.’s indispensable In Open Contempt examines how we bear witness to sites and perpetrators of racial trauma.

By Sonya Lea

I met Irvin Weathersby Jr. on the day before the United States national elections last fall. We were on opposite ends of the country, talking about his book, In Open Contempt: Confronting White Supremacy in Art & Public Space (Penguin Random House, 2025). The book is a work of nonfiction, a close examination of the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces, monuments, and markers of history. It confronts and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma. Beautiful in its language and masterful in scope, Weathersby asks questions about “the truths we are taught because we can’t look away.” He wonders if we “really do need to see death.” Scenes from the author’s life make this book read like a memoir, and Weathersby’s wise voice, as an art and cultural critic, interrogates works and histories that contain racial violence and oppression.

A spirited and often poetic treatment of an important and timely topic.

On a sweltering  July day, in the Carriage House on the St. Joseph’s campus in Clinton Hill, Irvin sat down for a conversation with Tim Coover, a Foundry Fellow, Writer’s Foundry Review editor, and a former student. Over coffee and chocolate croissants, they discussed many topics related to Irvin’s forthcoming memoir: art, politics, the value and the danger of museums, and how to be a citizen of this contradictory country.

Mellon/ACLS Community College Faculty Fellowships

Irvin Weathersby Jr. lectures in the English Department at Queensborough Community College, teaching composition and creative writing. A 2019 Bernard O’Keefe Scholar in Nonfiction at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, Mr. Weathersby often writes about race and the Black experience. A former high school teacher and re-entry educator in Baltimore, the South Bronx and Harlem, his writing centers on marginalized communities. Irivin’s essays have appeared in Esquire, The Atlantic, The Root, EBONY, and elsewhere talks about his upcoming book, In Open Contempt (Viking/Penguin), a memoir-in-essays focused on expressions of white supremacy in art found in New Orleans, his hometown, and around the world.