Activist DeRay Mckesson Announces Book Deal

Civil rights activists, podcast host and electric-blue puffy-vest aficionado DeRay Mckesson will release his first book in the fall.

Entitled On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case for Hope, which is perhaps the second-most civil-rights-ish name ever (my memoir, Justice Bruises: A Negro Spiritual About Equality Aboard the Freedom Train, being No. 1), Mckesson’s book is described as a “conversation about activism, resistance, and justice that embraces our nation’s complex history,” as Mckesson “dissects how deliberate oppression persists, how racial injustice strips our lives of promise, and how technology has added a new dimension to mass action and social change.”

Although I’m probably not smart enough to understand what that means, I’m definitely looking forward to reading it.

“In the book, I aim to explore ideas of resistance and freedom informed by the perspective of the protests over the past four years and also my work in education and as a young organizer in Baltimore,” Mckesson told The Root. He continued:

I am writing about a host of things that I’ve not publicly discussed before, such as meetings with President Obama, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and a host of other topics that required more space than Twitter, my go-to platform, allows. I also have met incredible activists and organizers around the world and have learned from these conversations and interactions and am exploring the common themes of struggle and resistance that I’ve seen, with a bias towards action, towards how we get to the other side of freedom.

The book will be published by Viking Press and is scheduled for release on Sept. 4, 2018. (I know what you’re thinking, but the fact that the publisher is named after a group of violent Caucasians known for raping and pillaging is inconsequential. My book will be published by Colonialist Conquerers Publishing under its Yes Massa imprint.)

Mckesson, who burst into the public arena in 2014 following the death of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Mo., began his career as an educator. His continued work for justice and equality has made him one of the most prominent freedom fighters in the country. The activist was named No. 11 on Fortune’s World’s Greatest Leaders list.

In response to the announcement that he landed a book deal, a spokesman for white people replied, “But shouldn’t all vests matter?”