“America loves to hand us the country and say, ‘Here, you fix it,’ when everything is going to shit,” author-activist-educator Brittney Cooper aptly noted during one of our first broadcasts of of The Root Presents: It’s Lit!. Speaking only months after the murder of George Floyd, and a full two years after the publication of her book, Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower, Cooper found herself in the unique position of having penned a latent bestseller; one of several books making antiracist must-read books in the wake of both a global pandemic and a so-called racial reckoning.
As one who has been deeply entrenched in the fight since well before it was a national talking point, Cooper had plenty of feelings to share about becoming a bestseller in a moment that folks were desperately seeking ways to be antiracist (because apparently, it was harder than we thought). In fact, her perception of our shared country is one that “has this deep sense of Black women just coming to clean up the messes that they make.”
Whether speaking of Black resistance, Breonna Taylor or Beyoncé (or all of the above—because all can be relevant, true and coexistent at once), Cooper keeps it real—and remains eloquent with her rage when discussing the issues facing Black America, and how we fight for Black lives, in particular, as she told us during our conversation: “Here’s where I am on it: I want us to fight for living Black people and fighting for them, as hard as we fight for dead Black people.”
You can hear more from the eloquent Brittany Cooper in this recast of The Root Presents: It’s Lit!: Getting Crunk With Brittney Cooper, available on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, iHeart Radio, Google Podcasts, Amazon, TuneIn, and Radio Public.