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This long-awaited and essential publication collects three decades of writings by and interviews with Glenn Ligon, whose work has delivered an incisive examination of race, history, sexuality, and culture in America since his emergence as an artist in the late 1980s.

No stranger to the written word, Ligon has routinely used text from the work of James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Gertrude Stein, Richard Pryor, and others to create art that centers Blackness within the historically white backdrop of the art world and American culture. He began writing in the early 2000s, engaging deeply with the work of peers such as Julie Mehretu, Chris Ofili, and Lorna Simpson, as well as that of artists who came before him, among them Philip Guston, David Hammons, and Andy Warhol. Throughout these writings, Ligon combines razor-sharp insight with anecdotes and autobiographical details, providing the fullest picture yet of the artist and his ongoing evaluation of the art and politics of our time.

Complementing the essays are illuminating interviews with Helga Davis, Thelma Golden, Byron Kim, Hamza Walker, and others, as well as an introduction by writer and curator Thomas (T.) Jean Lax.