Weathering: Notes From Periracial America

(Paperback)

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"...come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed."
from Lucille Clifton, "won't you celebrate with me."

"What does periracial mean Its a word I made up while casting about for a way to capture both the chronic nature of structural injustice and inequity of America and my own weariness. A way to label life under that particular tooth in the zipper of interlocking systems of oppression bell hooks called imperialist white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy. (What a lot to resist. No wonder were so tired!) To capture the endless cycle of progress and backlash which has shaped my one small life here in America during the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. To counter the ideanow largely abandoned but innocently believed for most of my adult life by white Americans on both ends of the political spectrum that America has ever been post-racial. To suggest that I suspect, at this sad rate, we never will be."Kim McLarin, on the meaning of Periracial

Imbued with unapologetic, raw and unflinching honesty, the essays in Everyday Something Has Tried to Kill Me And Has Failedto illuminate the pain and power of aging Black women. In the process, McLarin shines a light on a group that is often invisible. Powerfully speaking truth to power,Everyday Something Has Tried to Kill Me And Has Failedis an important contribution to the ongoing dialogue about race, aging and feminism.

Author Bio

Kim McLarin is the author of three critically-acclaimed novels, several essay collections and the bibilomemoir James Baldwin's Another Country: Bookmarked. Her last essay collection, Womanish, was called "blisteringly honest, funny and vulnerable" by The New York Times, and was excerpted in The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in the New England Review, the Sewanee Review, The Sun Magazine, The Root, Slate, The Washington Post, The New York Times and many other publications. She is a former staff writer for The Associated Press, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The New York Times. She appears regularly on Basic Black, the longest running program on public television focusing on the interests of people of color, produced at WGBH. She holds a BA from Duke University and is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy. Kim is Professor of Creative Writing and Graduate Program Director of the MFA in Popular Fiction at Emerson College.