The Center for Fiction welcomed Nell Irvin Painter, esteemed historian and the New York Times bestselling author of The History of White People, to celebrate her new essay collection I Just Keep Talking. Named one of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024, the collection compiles over 40 of the most vibrant and insightful essays from Painter’s illustrious writing career. Her writings span topics of art, politics, racism, and identity, delving deep into figures like Toni Morrison, Malcolm X, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and more. The essay collection is woven together by Painter’s original artwork and framed by a new introduction and coda. With its sharp and complex analysis, I Just Keep Talking is a stunning portrait of America and its failures that could only have been written by one of the most influential and important historians of this century. New Yorker staff writer and MacDowell board chair Doreen St. Félix joined Painter for a rousing conversation on the curation of the new collection and its unique combination of art and essays.
Featured Book
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I Just Keep Talking
By Nell Irvin Painter
Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Throughout her prolific writing career, Nell Painter has published works on such luminaries as Sojourner Truth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Malcolm X. Her unique vantage on American history pushes the boundaries of personal narrative and academic authorship. Led by an unbridled curiosity for her subjects, Painter asks readers to reconsider ideas of race, politics, and identity. I Just Keep Talking assembles her writing for the first time into a single volume, displaying the breadth and depth of Painter’s decades-long historical inquiry and the evolution of Black political thought—and includes a dazzling introduction and coda being published for the first time in this collection. From her mining of figures like Carrie Buck and Martin Delaney for their resonance today, to a deep dive into the history of exclusion through the work of Toni Morrison, to a discussion of the American political landscape after the 2016 election, Painter nimbly portrays the trials of a country frequently at war with itself.
Along with Painter’s writing, this collection offers her original artwork, threaded throughout the book as counterpoint and emphasis. Her visual art shows a deft mind turning toward the tragedy and humor of her subjects; pulling from newspapers, personal records, and original sketches, Painter’s artwork testifies to the dialectic of tremendous change and stasis that continues to shape American history.
These essays resist easy answers in favor of complexity, the inescapable sense of our country’s potential thwarted by its failures. This collection will surely solidify Painter’s place among the finest critics and writers of the last half century.
In Conversation
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Nell Irvin Painter
Nell Irvin Painter
Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University, is the author of books including the New York Times bestseller The History of White People; Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol; and the National Book Critics Circle finalist Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over. A Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2007, she has received honorary degrees from Yale, Wesleyan, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dartmouth. After a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, she earned degrees in painting from Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers and the Rhode Island School of Design. Nell Painter lives and works in East Orange, New Jersey, and has made artists’ books in residencies such as MacDowell, Yaddo, Ucross, and Bogliasco. She currently serves as Madame Chairman of MacDowell.
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Doreen St. Félix
Doreen St. Félix
Doreen St. Félix is a writer and critic. She has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 2017. She is a winner of the National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary.
