In Open Contempt - by Irvin Weathersby (Hardcover)

About the Book

"A stirring journey into the soul of a fractured America that confronts the enduring specter of white supremacy in our art, monuments, and public spaces"--

Book Synopsis

"An awe-striking masterpiece of love."
--Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"The sentences alone in In Open Contempt make it one of the most memorable books of the decade. But it's the unexpected lingering and genius crafting of consequential action that makes this one of the freshest explorations of space I've ever read. Irvin Weathersby Jr. has made something we've never before seen, felt, or witnessed."
--Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

A stirring journey into the soul of a fractured America that confronts the enduring specter of white supremacy in our art, monuments, and public spaces, from a captivating new literary voice

Amid the ongoing reckoning over America's history of anti-Black racism, scores of monuments to slaveowners and Confederate soldiers still proudly dot the country's landscape, while schools and street signs continue to bear the names of segregationists. With poignant, lyrical prose, cultural commentator Irvin Weathersby confronts the inescapable specter of white supremacy in our open spaces and contemplates what it means to bear witness to sites of lasting racial trauma.

Weathersby takes us from the streets of his childhood in New Orleans's Lower Ninth Ward to the Whitney Plantation; from the graffitied pedestals of Confederate statues lining Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia, to the location of a racist terror attack in Charlottesville; from the site of the Wounded Knee massacre in South Dakota to a Kara Walker art installation at a former sugar factory in Brooklyn, New York. Along the way, he challenges the creation myths embedded in America's landmarks and meets artists, curators, and city planners doing the same. Urgent and unflinchingly intimate, In Open Contempt offers a hopeful reimagining of the spaces we share in order to honor our nation's true history, encouraging us to make room for love as a way to heal and treat each other more humanely.

Review Quotes

"In language gorgeous enough to be lyric, Irvin Weathersby Jr. helps us examine some of the stone grotesquerie erected and living among us--the remainders of before, the reminders of blood. And in doing so with such care, he's granted us this work, a new monument to gaze at. One that should be raised and never razed. One that should be seen for what it is, an awe-striking masterpiece of love."
--Jason Reynolds, #1 New York Times bestselling author

"The sentences alone in In Open Contempt make it one of the most memorable books of the decade. But it's the unexpected lingering and genius crafting of consequential action that makes this one of the freshest explorations of space I've ever read. Irvin Weathersby Jr. has made something we've never before seen, felt, or witnessed."
--Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy: An American Memoir

"When James Baldwin talked about being a witness, Irvin Weathersby's In Open Contempt is what he meant. With accounts and observations equally enlightening, enraging, harrowing, and hopeful, Weathersby guides the reader through contemporary and historical spaces both public and private with an unflinching veracity. It is, in fact, when he illustrates how the borders between time and distance are artificial, and the 'then' and the 'now' are inexorably linked, that the narrative sings most sublimely. In Open Contempt is an intelligent implication and a courageous achievement."
--Robert Jones, Jr., New York Times bestselling author of The Prophets, a finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction

"Weathersby interrogates public space and how artists, architects, city planners, and others are doubling down on our racist inception story. He reimagines our society towards one that honors the world we claim to be fighting for."
--Elle

"Readers who drive or walk past a monument to a historical figure every day will surely be spurred to regard it with fresh new eyes after reading this book. You may never view artwork quite the same, either, because what you'll learn inside In Open Contempt is monumental."
--The Miami Times

"If you're even a little adjacent to the art, design, and architecture spaces, understanding the ways in which white supremacy informs these fields is essential, and In Open Contempt guides its readers to do just that."
--Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2025

"A sobering elegy for all we misremember."
--Booklist (starred review)

"A moving examination of controversial public monuments that confronts our nation's troubled past. . . . Weathersby writes with passion and clarity about the shameful history of chattel slavery, racial segregation, anti-Black violence, the brutal conquest of Native Americans, and the horrors of Hurricane Katrina, weaving this history of racial humiliation and oppression into his contemporary observations about the importance of monumentality and public art. . . . A spirited and often poetic treatment of an important and timely topic."
--Kirkus Reviews

"In this thoughtful tour de force, Irvin Weathersby Jr. pulls off an impressive feat: challenging readers to consider historical contexts that were so often disregarded when sculptors and artists constructed paeans to the past. After reading In Open Contempt, it feels impossible to look at any statue or memorial in the same way again. This book inspires readers to marvel and to scrutinize the world that is presented to them, teaching us to grapple with the complex manifestations of cruelty, beauty, and truth that are on display in some of our most sacred spaces."
--Robert Samuels, Pulitzer Prize-winning coauthor of His Name Is George Floyd

"Irvin Weathersby Jr.'s In Open Contempt serves up the recipes for a nation starved for clarity and direction, blending history's bitter truths with the sweet promise of art's transformative power. His prose dances between past and present, challenging us to confront the monuments of our minds and the landscapes of our lives. This book sings of resilience and rebellion, calling us to reimagine a future where every story, every struggle, and every soul is honored."
--Frederick Joseph, New York Times bestselling author of Patriarchy Blues

"A fierce and personal refutation of the monuments that loomed and continue to loom over communities. Weathersby's roving eye misses nothing. The reader is left enlightened and ready to tear down the remaining idols from their pedestals. The nation needs In Open Contempt."
--Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of The American Daughters

"Irvin Weathersby's immersive and incisive In Open Contempt invites us to look strangely at new or familiar surroundings and become more attuned to the violent and oppressive master narratives planned into our shared spaces. Weathersby meditates on the failures and possibilities of public memory, asking how we can radically reassess who and what matters toward justice and collective healing."
--Nadia Owusu, author of Aftershocks

"In Open Contempt is a searing, deeply personal journey across America's historical landscape through stories hidden within its monuments, art, and cities. Weathersby delivers a sure and damning voice in the lineage of Ta-Nehisi Coates and Hanif Abdurraqib, effortlessly extracting fact from myth, secret from symbol. In Open Contempt is a chiseled and well-hewed work that feels as much like standing before a mountain as it does appreciating a masterful sculpture. So much of what we could not see is revealed. So much positioned in front of us so we cannot look away. This book is a revelation. In a word: necessary. Absolutely necessary."
--Cebo Campbell, author of Sky Full of Elephants

"Whether facing down white supremacists in New Orleans or interrogating the legacy of Mount Rushmore or the Pine Ridge reservation, Irvin Weathersby Jr. reveals what is often hidden in plain sight: our country's false promises and lies, the legacies and images erected and erased by whiteness. But his encounters also cause Weathersby to challenge his own blind spots and to reveal crucial elements of his own story as a Black man in America. What results is disturbing, profound and penetrating, deeply personal, and beautifully written, its own true work of art."
--David Mura, author of The Stories Whiteness Tells Itself: Racial Myths and Our American Narratives

About the Author

Irvin Weathersby Jr. is a Brooklyn-based writer and professor from New Orleans. He teaches at Queensborough Community College and at City College of New York in the MFA in Creative Writing program. His writing has been fea­tured in Guernica, Esquire, The Atlantic, EBONY, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from The New School, an MA from Morgan State University, and a BA from Morehouse College, and he has received fellowships and awards from the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foun­dation, the Research Foundation of CUNY, the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Mellon Foundation.