Culture
Book Review: ‘We Tried to Tell Y’All’ by Meredith D. Clark
WE TRIED TO TELL Y’ALL: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives, by Meredith D. Clark
Do you remember where you were in early December 2020? It was peak pandemic, so chances are you were at home and online. And if you were Black and on Twitter, you were probably reading or tweeting about the Negro Solstice.
On Dec. 5, an argument about the authenticity of the coronavirus ended with a pandemic denier saying that for Black people, on the upcoming winter solstice, during this extraordinary planetary conjunction, “our Real DNA will be unlocked.”
The twinned cosmic events seemed star-crossed to a few other Twitter users, and what followed is what the chronically online like to call a “poster’s holiday.” Jokes flew among Black people about turning into the X-Men, levitating, acquiring powers and beaming themselves into the future. People uploaded selfies with photoshopped glowing laser eyes. Someone refashioned the logo from the 2006 show “Heroes” into “Negros.”
Meredith D. Clark, a professor of race and political communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, uses this example to kick off her new book, “We Tried to Tell Y’All: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives.” She writes that the #NegroSolstice was a “life-affirming signal that Black people were somehow surviving a second year of lockdowns — and with our humor intact.”
It was undeniably one of the better chapters on late Twitter, yet few people outside the intended community knew what to make of it — if they knew about it at all. One person Clark interviewed for her book described Black Twitter as “a powerful, parallel Twitter,” and it often felt that way, like being in a kitchen at a party and having a completely different — and often more interesting — conversation than the main one going on in the living room.
Although it was all so chronologically recent — and although some denatured forms of it still exist — Clark noticed that young people around her seemed to be, already, forgetting the glory days of Black Twitter, and their importance. Often when an academic writes about a cultural phenomenon that exists outside the mainstream consciousness, there’s an attempt to explain it as a means to legitimize it. Clark, instead, memorializes Black Twitter, hoping to prevent further perversion of Black innovation, Black language, culture and style. (Just look at the complete and utter devolution of “woke.”)
Black Twitter’s most lasting legacy, according to Clark, is pulling off a “full-scale revolution” in how American news media reported on Black people — which she correctly argues has a direct correlation to how people perceive the value of Black life and govern it. She intends the book as a warning: To continue on in the tradition of white media elites will lead to a further disenfranchisement of nonwhite people (and working-class white people, too) and will lead to the collapse of the country. Her warning has prescience: It’s here.
For a time, Black Twitter forced the world to pay attention to Black people and their concerns. Clark describes its contributions as “a collective intervention on mainstream media narratives about Black life in America in the early 21st century.”
She gives the example of the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, created in response to the mainstream media’s use of discriminatory headlines and photographs of Michael Brown to construct a narrative of criminality after he was killed by Darren Wilson. Or the way Black Twitter compared the acquittal of Casey Anthony with the conviction of Shanesha Taylor, a young mother put in jail for leaving her kids in the car during a job interview. Each of these instances — and there are dozens, if not hundreds — lays bare the hypocrisy in our legal system and how it is normalized by unconscious journalistic biases.
Anyone who relied on Black Twitter as a source of relief and entertainment knows the community served as an antidote to the constant gaslighting that comes with living in America.
Clark excavates deeper: She doesn’t just ratify jokes and meme culture as collective processing. She frames the larger phenomenon as a necessary infrastructure of accountability that has been denied and would not be available any other way. Black Twitter exists for laughs, of course, but it also exists to resist the sane-washing of America (and the world) by constantly refuting the racist assumptions that underline Black existence in America and are often fortified by the media. If there’s a modern race and class consciousness online, it’s in large part because of Black Twitter.
The book does not fully tangle with the cost of being in these spaces and doing this work publicly — the harassment and the data surveillance and mining whose tolls we cannot yet fully understand. Sure, people launched careers off their accounts, but we made less money than was made off us, and there are a number of uncanny and unnerving similarities to all of the predominantly white industries — sports, music, Hollywood — that have extorted and extracted value from Black creatives since the beginning of time.
Also, Clark’s book implies that the cohesion of Black Twitter rarely splintered. But by omitting most of the ways Black Twitter occasionally cannibalized itself, Clark chooses to focus on a collective goodness of Black culture online — as if everyone shares the same goals of social justice, or even the definition of liberation.
Part of the magic of Black Twitter is (was?) how boundless it seemed at times. There may have been people who felt part of that community but didn’t post about it, or tweet along hashtag lines. It’s impossible to know what the group thought, universally, because the group itself was almost impossible to quantify.
Still, it would have been fascinating to read more on how certain debates crystallized along lines of class, gender and sexuality. For instance, the misogynoir funneled at Megan Thee Stallion after she was shot by Tory Lanez seems to fall outside the window of Clark’s research, despite having exploded Black Twitter’s notions of Black femme sexuality and agency. (It’s also worth noting that the word “transphobia” appears only twice in the book.)
Clark finished her book before the blast ratio of Elon Musk’s takeover of the site could be fully comprehended, but the same question lingers over her formidable body of work. What does the future hold? That’s for a different book.
Black Twitter has waned, but it is far from over. The conditions that created the need for Black Twitter have not dissipated; if anything, they are only intensifying. What Clark carefully and lovingly outlines is too necessary not to repeat itself. It was a rare moment in history to be in control of the narratives created about us. And at least for now, there’s a blueprint to know how to start again when the time is right.
WE TRIED TO TELL Y’ALL: Black Twitter and the Rise of Digital Counternarratives | By Meredith D. Clark | Oxford University Press | 174 pp. | Paperback, $24.99
As a lifelong fan of romantic comedies, my list of favorite “sweet” romances is extensive.
Not because I have a spice aversion — but because the rom-coms I love most, with that classic cinematic vibe, often come with fewer peppers on the spice scale.
Some people refer to these books as “closed door.” I prefer to think of them as “in the hall” romances (though that admittedly doesn’t roll off the tongue quite the same way). The reader is there for all the swoon, the burn and the banter — but when things head to the bedroom, the reader remains out in the hallway. With less focus on what happens inside the boudoir, all that juicy heightened tension and yearning really shine. Here are a few of my favorites.
SEEK THE TRAITOR’S SON, by Veronica Roth
I read Veronica Roth’s new novel for adults, “Seek the Traitor’s Son,” over one weekend and had a hard time putting it down, and not just because I was procrastinating on my house chores.
There’s much about the novel one would expect from Roth, the author of the Divergent series, one of the hottest dystopian young adult series of the 2010s. Thematically, the novels are similar. Like “Divergent,” this new book is also set in an alternate, dystopian version of our world; it is also packed with vivid, present-tense prose full of capitalized labels to let you know that something different is going on; and it also centers on a classic “Chosen One” who is burdened by the mantle of savior she carries.
These are classic tropes, but I, like many other genre fiction fans, enjoy that familiarity. Still, I’m always hoping for a subversion, a tornado twist that sucks me into imagination land.
In “Seek the Traitor’s Son,” our Chosen One is Elegy Ahn, the spare heir of the most powerful woman in Cedre. Elegy likes her life, even if it’s filled with danger. See, some time ago, a virus took over the world. The contagion is strange: Everyone who is infected dies, but 50 percent of the people who die come back to life with mysterious cognitive gifts.
After the outbreak, Earth split into two factions: The dominant Talusar, who worship the Fever, believe it is a divine gift, willingly infect themselves with it and consider anyone who does not submit to it a blasphemer; and Cedre, a small country made up of everyone who rejects the virus and the dogma around it. They are, naturally, at war.
Early in the book, Elegy, solidly on the Cedre side, and Rava Vidar, a brutal Talusar general, are summoned by an order of prophets who tell them: One of you will lead your people to victory over the other, and one of the deciding factors involves an unnamed man whom Elegy is prophesied to fall in love with.
Elegy doesn’t want this. But the prophecy spurs the Talusar into action, and so her mother assigns her a Talusaran refugee as a knight and forces her into the fray as the Hope of Cedre.
If that seems like a lot of setup, don’t worry. That’s just the first few chapters. Besides, if you know those dystopian novel tropes, you’ll get the hang of it. Roth gets through the world exposition quickly, and after a rather jarring time skip, the plot takes off, effectively and entertainingly driving readers to the novel’s exhilarating end.
The strength of “Seek the Traitor’s Son” is Roth’s character work. Elegy is a dynamic heroine. She has a lot to lose, and she leads with love, which is reflected in the intense grief she feels for the people she’s lost in the war and the life the prophecy took from her. It’s love that makes her stop running from her destiny and do what she thinks is right to save the people she has left.
Many authors isolate their characters to back them into bad decisions, so it’s refreshing that Roth has given Elegy a community to support her. Her sister Hela in particular is a treat. She’s refreshingly grounded, and often gives a much needed reprieve from the melodrama of the other characters’ lives. (She has an important subplot that has to do with a glowing alien plant, but the real reason you should pay attention to her is that she’s funny, loves her sister so much, has cool friends and listens to gay romance novels.) Hela and Elegy’s unwavering loyalty to each other casts a positive illumination on both characters.
My favorite character is Theren, Elegy’s knight, who is kind and empathetic to everyone but himself. As the obvious romantic lead, his character most diverges from genre standard because of the nuanced depiction of his trauma. He has been so broken by his experiences that he thinks what he can do with his body is all he can offer, and it’s worth nothing to him.
But like I said, I need subversion, and for all the creative world-building, I didn’t quite get it. The most distinct part of the novel was the setting and structure of alternate Earth, as well as the subcultures born from that setting. But after ripping through the novel, I found that those details didn’t provide nourishment for thought, and the general handwaviness of the technology and history of Earth was distractingly easy to nitpick.
I am a greedy reader, so I want my books to have everything: romance, action, an intellectual theme, novel ideas about the future, and character development. “Seek the Traitor’s Son” comes close. The novel is the first in a series, and I’m willing to hold my reservations until I read the next book. Elegy and Theren are worth it.
SEEK THE TRAITOR’S SON | By Veronica Roth | Tor | 416 pp. | $29
To mark the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, “Revolution” is the timely theme of the Firsts London book fair, opening Thursday in the contemporary art spaces of the Saatchi Gallery.
The fair, running Thursday through Sunday, will feature 100 dealers’ booths on three floors of the neoclassical, early 19th-century building in the upscale Chelsea neighborhood and will take place at a moment of geopolitical convulsion, if not revolution. It also coincides with a profound change in reading habits: Fewer people read for pleasure, and when they do, more often it is on a screen. And yet some physical books are fetching record prices.
Why is that? Clues can be found at Firsts London, regarded as Britain’s pre-eminent fair devoted to collectible books, maps, manuscripts and ephemera. Dealers will be responding to the revolution theme by showing a curated selection of items that document political upheavals over the centuries.
While the organizers — members of the nonprofit Antiquarian Bookseller’s Association and the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers — have been eager to expand the theme to include material that throws light on revolutions in other realms such as science and social attitudes, the momentousness of the Declaration’s anniversary has spurred dealers to bring items with ties to 18th-century America.
The New York-based dealer James Cummins Bookseller, for instance, will be offering a 1775 London printing of Congress’s declaration of the “Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms” against the British authorities. Mostly written by John Dickinson and Thomas Jefferson and published just a year before the Declaration of Independence, the document represents a decisive moment in the colonies’ struggle for self-determination. It is priced at $22,500.
“We’re generalists. We’re bringing a bit of everything,” said Jeremy Markowitz, a specialist on American books at Cummins. “But this year, because of the anniversary, we’re bringing Americana that we otherwise wouldn’t have brought.”
The London dealer Shapero Rare Books will be showing a letter written in January 1797 by Thomas Paine, one of the most influential Founding Fathers, to his friend Col. John Fellows who had served with the American militia during the Revolutionary War. The text reiterates the views of Paine’s open letter to George Washington, urging him to retire from the presidency, fearing that the office might become hereditary. With an asking price of 95,000 pounds, or about $130,000. Paine’s letter to Fellows was written just weeks before Washington stood down in March at the end of his second term, a practice later enshrined in the 22nd Amendment limiting presidents to two terms.
Bernard Quaritch, another London bookseller, will be exhibiting a first edition in book form of “The Federalist Papers,” the celebrated collection of essays written in favor of the new Constitution by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay from 1787-1788. (These texts are mentioned in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning musical “Hamilton.”) In its original binding, with the pages uncut and largely unopened, this pioneering work of U.S. political philosophy is priced at £220,000.
The fair, like the United States, has gone through its own process of reinvention. It is the sixth annual edition of Firsts London, but its origins stretch from 1958, when its more traditional forerunner, the London International Antiquarian Book Fair, was founded.
The rebranded Firsts London was initially held at an exhibition space in Battersea Park in 2019, then transferred to the Saatchi in 2021. (There is also Firsts New York and Firsts Hong Kong.) Last year the event attracted an estimated 5,000 visitors over its four days, according to the organizers, and notable sales were made.
“Book fairs are now part of the ‘experience culture.’ In an age where everything is available at a click, fairs have to present themselves in a different way,” the exhibitor Daniel Crouch said.
Crouch will be showing two late-18th-century engraved maps printed on paper of New York by Bernard Ratzer, an engineer commissioned by the British to survey the city and its environs in 1766 and 1767 in case it became a battlefield. Ratzer’s large three-sheet map of the southern end of Manhattan and part of New Jersey and Brooklyn is priced at £240,000; his smaller map of south Manhattan at £25,000. Both date from January 1776, just six months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776.
Other revolutions are also represented. The cover design of Millicent Fawcett ’s classic 1920 Suffragists tract, “The Women’s Victory — and After,” from the collection of the Senate House Library at the University of London, is the poster image for the event and the library is lending the entire pamphlet for display at the fair.
Scientific revolutions are represented by items like a 1976 first edition of Richard Dawkins’s book “The Selfish Gene,” offered at £2,250 by Ashton Rare Books of Market Harborough in Leicestershire, England. Fold the Corner Books in Surrey is offering a handwritten letter by an anonymous British spy describing scenes in Paris in 1791 during the French Revolution, and the dealers at Peter Harrington are bringing a Chinese parade banner from the Cultural Revolution. The banner and the letter are each priced at £750.
While the U.S. document’s anniversary has spurred many exhibitors to show rare 18th-century American items, the organizers stressed the fair’s wider remit.
“We wanted to do something related to our cousins over the water, but something a bit broader than just the American Revolution,” said Tom Lintern-Mole, the chairman of this year’s London fair.
“Revolution is a concept,” he said. “It encompasses everything to do with our world. Printing itself was a revolution. It helps foment revolutions. We like to think that books make history, as well as being artifacts of it.”
In terms of making sales, science fiction and science and fantasy are genres that many traders see as the key growth areas, because of, in great part, recent Hollywood adaptations. “Affluent younger collectors are moving the needle in the market,” said Pom Harrington, owner of Peter Harrington.
Cummins is offering a 1965 first edition of “Dune” for $16,500, while the London-based Foster Books will be asking £22,500 for a 1954-1955 three-volume first edition of “The Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is sumptuously covered in red morocco leather by the binders at Bayntun Riviere.
And with the rise of tech, online sales have increasingly replaced high street transactions, resulting in many rare-book shops closing. Tom W. Ayling, who trades from his home in Oxfordshire and is exhibiting at Firsts London, is one of the most prominent of a cohort of young dealers who sell online and at fairs without the expense of a shop.
“I get almost all my customers through social media,” said Ayling, who has about 298,000 followers on Instagram alone.
Tolkien is a favorite subject for his engaging, regular video posts. Ayling will be bringing a copy of the author’s extremely rare collection of poems, “Songs for the Philologists.” Printed in 1936, only about 15 copies of the collection are known. Ayling is asking £65,000 for this one.
“I put as much content out there as I can to get people interested in book collecting,” Ayling said. “I want to widen the arcane world of book collecting to a mass audience.”
A mass audience collecting — let alone reading — books? That really would be a revolution.
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