About this Event
Join us for an in-person event with award-winning writer Tracie McMillan for the launch of her new book The White Bonus: Five Families and the Cash Value of Racism in America. Joining Tracie in conversation is best-selling author Kiese Laymon. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store's 3rd floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.
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STRAND IN-PERSON EVENT COVID-19 POLICY:
Masks and vaccination checks are not required for entry.* Attendees are welcome to wear a mask if they choose. If you do not have a mask and would like one, The Strand will provide masks at the door.
*Please note this is subject to change any time before or during the event per the author’s request.
ACCESSIBILITY:
Strand Book Store is an ADA compliant venue. The event space is accessible via elevator. Please ask a Strand employee upon arrival for directions to accessible seating if preferred.
ASL interpretation is available for this event by request only. Please reach out to our events team at [email protected] by April 9th to request.
For further information on accessibility in this space, or to make a request, please contact
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Award-winning journalist Tracie McMillan combines gripping memoir, top-notch original reporting, and rigorous research to measure the cash value of being white in America.
When we talk about racism in America, we usually talk about what’s been denied to people of color. But what if we started measuring what white people get? In The White Bonus, McMillan examines the monetary value of whiteness in this country through her own experiences and a broader societal examination.
McMillan had a turbulent and difficult upbringing, and her early adulthood was marked by real hunger and struggle, but she was able to get by and move up. When her reporter’s curiosity prompted her to measure her white privilege in her experience of upward mobility, she realized she needed to look at not only social advantages, but also money.
The White Bonus follows three generations of McMillan’s family, tracing the sources of their wealth. That personal narrative tethers a wider investigation into the laws and norms that give white Americans more opportunity than minorities. Measuring their cumulative material effect on her life, McMillan also expands the investigation beyond her own family, alternating her story with profiles of five other subjects of various classes and places, taking a look at their respective white bonuses.
McMillan showcases an ecosystem of institutions and practices that are supposed to treat all Americans the same but usually only benefit white people. For readers of Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law, and Stephanie Land’s Maid, The White Bonus will address the white working-class experience as it relates to race, quantifying the amorphous problem of racial privilege and investigating what we can do about it.
Raised in rural Michigan, Detroit- and Brooklyn-based writer Tracie McMillan has written for publications including the New York Times; Washington Post; Los Angeles Times; Mother Jones; Harper’s Magazine; Slate; and National Geographic. After putting herself through New York University and training under legendary reporter Wayne Barrett, she was the managing editor of the award-winning magazine City Limits from 2001 to 2005. A one-time target of Rush Limbaugh and a 2012-13 Knight-Wallace Journalism Fellow, McMillan is also the author of the bestselling The American Way of Eating (Scribner, 2012). McMillan’s work has been recognized by the Sidney Hillman Book Prize, the James Beard Foundation Journalism Awards, and Investigative Reporters and Editors, among others.
Photo credit: Sarah Rice
Kiese Laymon is a Black southern writer from Jackson, Mississippi. In his observant, often hilarious work, Laymon does battle with the personal and the political: race and family, body and shame, poverty and place. His savage humor and clear-eyed perceptiveness have earned him comparisons to Ta-Nehisi Coates, Alice Walker, and Mark Twain. He is the author of the award-winning memoir Heavy, the groundbreaking essay collection How to Slowly K*ll Yourself and Others in America, and the genre-defying novel Long Division.
Photo credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway, New York, United States
USD 5.00 to USD 32.99