Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer

chaun webster, "Without Terminus: untraining an archive" (Greywolf, 2026)

In his first work of nonfiction, poet chaun webster blends memoir, archival research, visual poetics, and cultural criticism to trace the ways structural anti-Black violence has shaped his inheritance, and grapples with the question of how to know—and mourn—the kin he was never able to meet. webster is particularly drawn to his grandfather Reginald, who worked for years as a Pullman porter, who was denied rest while his labor enabled rest for others, and who died without receiving a pension before webster was born. Returning to the figures of Reginald and the train, webster explores the relationship between comportment and confinement, speaking in tongues in the Pentecostal church, the ancestral meeting place of dreams, his fraught relationship with his mother, and moments with his own child. Throughout, webster also reflects on nonbiological kinship, tethering his and his predecessors’ lives to those of several historical Black figures—Harriet Jacobs, John Henry, Henry “Box” Brown, and Henry Dumas, a writer who was killed by New York City police while riding the subway. Attempting to exhaust the possibilities of the sentence and the grammar of anti-Blackness, webster riffs and rails on the debris within reach. Part elegy, part archival detective story, and part visual poem, Without Terminus: untraining an archive [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781644453926] (Greywolf, 2026) is a philosophically rigorous and deeply moving text that takes us beyond the archive of loss. You can find the works chaun references during our conversation, as well as a further discussion about literary form, at the Additions to the Archive Substack [https://sullivansummer.substack.com/]. Follow chaun webster on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/dainstapoet/]. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/additions-to-the-archive-with-sullivan-summer] on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/additionstothearchive/], Substack [https://sullivansummer.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips], and wherever you get your podcasts.

Steven W. Thrasher, "The Overseer Class: A Manifesto" (Amistad, 2026)

“The poor, of whatever color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn't. ‘If you must call a cop,’ we said in those days, ‘for God’s sake, make sure it's a white one.’ We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we feared black cops even more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder—on your head—to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other n******.” James Baldwin (1967) Professor and journalist Steven Thrasher, author of the critically acclaimed The Viral Underclass (one of Kirkus Reviews best books of 2022), explores in The Overseer Class: A Manifesto  [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780063399419](Amistad, 2026) what happens when members of historically minoritized groups are selected for high-visibility positions of power within existing institutions—law enforcement, academia, the military, for profit and not-for-profit corporations, and government—under the conditions of a kind of Faustian bargain. This is a conversation, and a book, not to be missed. You can find author Steven Thrasher on Bluesky [https://bsky.app/profile/thrasherxy.bsky.social] and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/thrasherxy/]. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/additions-to-the-archive-with-sullivan-summer] on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/additionstothearchive/], Substack [https://sullivansummer.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips], and wherever you get your podcasts.

Es-pranza Humphrey, "Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen" (Poster House Museum, 2026)

Starting in the 1880s, Black performers, and those invested in telling stories centering Black people, attempted to counter the dehumanizing and harmful stereotypes used to portray Black characters. Shows began touting “All Colored Revues” to indicate that a cast was made up of actual Black performers rather than white people in blackface, and that these spectacles aimed to build stories around the perception of Black experiences. Although these performances were sometimes flawed, and even overly prejudiced, they represented a significant form of Black American cultural development and expression. Since theatrical performances were rarely recorded, and many of the movies that featured all Black casts are now considered “lost films,” films for which no copy is known to survive, advertising posters often provide the only remaining evidence of the most important productions featuring Black performers between the 1870s and 1940s. These posters, and the historic innovations of playwrights, composers, directors, producers, and the Black performers behind them, are the subjects of the exhibition, Act Black: Posters From Black American Stage and Screen [https://posterhouse.org/exhibition/act-black-posters-from-black-american-stage-screen/], curated by our guest for this episode, Assistant Curator of Collections at New York City’s Poster House [https://posterhouse.org/] museum, Es-pranza Humphrey. Act Black: Posters from Black American Stage & Screen [https://posterhouse.org/exhibition/act-black-posters-from-black-american-stage-screen/] is on view at Poster House [https://posterhouse.org/] through September 6, 2026. Exhibition resources are also available via the Bloomberg Connects app [https://www.bloombergconnects.org/] until September 6, and at the Poster House online exhibition archive [https://posterhouse.org/exhibition-archive/] thereafter. Es-pranza’s recommended reading list is available at the Additions to the Archive Substack [https://sullivansummer.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips]. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/additions-to-the-archive-with-sullivan-summer] on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/additionstothearchive/], Substack [https://sullivansummer.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips], and wherever you get your podcasts.

Lerone Martin, "Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr." (Amistad, 2026)

We know who Martin Luther King Jr. became, but who was he at the beginning of his life? How did his youth inform his outlook and activism? Before Martin Luther King, Jr. was a civil rights leader, a Nobel Laureate, and a global hero, he was an emotional boy, a middling high school student devoted to fashion, dancing, and dating. Lerone A. Martin, Faculty Director of the Martin Luther King Institute at Stanford University, traces these roots to develop a fuller understanding of the influential preacher’s emotional life, his youthful confusion about his future and career direction, his teenage missteps, and his inspiration to fight for justice. Revelatory, humanizing, and compassionate, Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King Jr. ( [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780063340947]Amistad, 2026) unearths MLK’s days as “Little Mike,” the ever-eager middle child and a precocious prankster; his early experiences of segregation and the summers he spent on a Connecticut tobacco farm, his first trip outside the Jim Crow South; his transformative time at Morehouse, playing basketball, hosting parties, studying sociology, and joining the Ministers’ Union; and his winding path to seminary, his spiritual devotion, and his relationship with Coretta, his wife-to-be. As America undergoes another era of turmoil and change, this powerful biography—and this discussion—provides a vital roadmap for how greatness comes to light, and how history shapes a leader. You can find Lerone Martin [https://www.instagram.com/leroneamartin/], and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute [https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/] on Facebook [https://www.facebook.com/KingInstitute] and Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/mlkinginstitute/]. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/additions-to-the-archive-with-sullivan-summer] on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/additionstothearchive/], Substack [https://sullivansummer.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips], and wherever you get your podcasts.

Jason R. Young, "The Mask of Memory: White Racial Fantasy After the Civil War" (UNC Press, 2026)

In the early twentieth century, a group of white writers, artists, and performers from the cultural hub of Charleston, South Carolina, created and curated a highly sanitized view of slavery. They imagined a once and future plantation society that would reestablish them as the proper heirs of the slave past. In the process, they crafted a set of dangerously durable and virulent stereotypes about slavery. Many of the sights and sounds that Americans associate with slavery are rooted in this grandiose historical myth. The image of the Big House, sitting atop carefully manicured rolling green hills, is in large part, a fantasy, as is the idea of the plantation as an expansive family home to chivalrous planters and content slaves. Jason R. Young explores the persistence of these myths and the historical memory of slavery by focusing on the elite white mythmakers who helped shape our understanding of slavery. Examining literature, art, and performance, Young interrogates both the power and the folly of these ideas. In uncovering their origins, The Mask of Memory [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781469694351]: White Racial Fantasy After the Civil War [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781469694351] (UNC Press, 2026) resists these racial fantasies and challenges their stubborn resurgence in our own time. You can find Jason Young at the University of Michigan website [https://lsa.umich.edu/history/people/faculty/youngjr.html]. Subscribe, like, follow, and rate Additions to the Archive with Sullivan Summer [https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/up-partners/additions-to-the-archive-with-sullivan-summer] on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/additionstothearchive/], Substack [https://sullivansummer.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips], and wherever you get your podcasts.