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

Kyra Davis Lurie, "The Great Mann" (Crown, 2025)

In 1945, Charlie Trammell steps off a cross-country train into the vibrant tapestry of Los Angeles. Lured by his cousin Marguerite’s invitation to the esteemed West Adams Heights, Charlie is immediately captivated by the Black opulence of L.A.’s newly rechristened “Sugar Hill.” Settling in at a local actress’s energetic boarding house, Charlie discovers a different way of life—one brimming with opportunity—from a promising career at a Black-owned insurance firm, the absence of Jim Crow, to the potential of an unforgettable romance. But nothing dazzles quite like James “Reaper” Mann. Reaper’s extravagant parties, attended by luminaries like Lena Horne and Hattie McDaniel, draw Charlie in, bringing the milieu of wealth and excess within his reach. But as Charlie’s unusual bond with Reaper deepens, so does the tension in the neighborhood as white neighbors, frustrated by their own dwindling fortunes, ignite a landmark court case that threatens the community’s well-being with promises of retribution. Told from the unique perspective of a young man who has just returned from a grueling, segregated war, The Great Mann [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9780593800867] (Crown, 2025) is a poignant reimagining of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby set amongst L.A.’s Black elite weaves a compelling narrative of wealth and class, illuminating the complexities of Black identity and education in post-war America. You can find Kyra on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/kyradavislurie/], Threads [https://www.threads.com/@kyradavislurie], and TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@kyra.davis.lurie]. 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.

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, "Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me" (37 Ink, 2026)

The N-word is one of the most perplexing, controversial and misunderstood words in the American lexicon. It’s a word that Elizabeth Pryor has not only contemplated, it’s one that she has taught and observed up close. When a white student quoted her father and blurted out the N-word in the middle of a class she was teaching, Professor Pryor’s worlds collided. In that moment, she was forced to confront the history of the notorious slur in the United States, and her complicated relationship with her father Richard Pryor, who made the word a trademark of his comedy in the 1970s. As she dives into her research, her own memories of the N-word come flooding back in unprocessed memories that she hadn’t thought about for decades. In reckoning with those memories, Elizabeth goes on a more public journey of discovery of the messy and sometimes surprising legacies of racism in the United States. A braided narrative that seamlessly integrates the history of the N-word with Elizabeth’s own story of growing up the Black Jewish daughter of Richard Pryor, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word and Me [https://bookshop.org/a/12343/9781982154509] (37 Ink, 2026) follows Elizabeth as she becomes a leading scholar and teacher of the very word her father put on the pop culture map. You can find Elizabeth on her website [https://www.pryorhistories.com/], Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/pryorhistories/], and TikTok [https://www.tiktok.com/@pryorhistories]. Her viral Ted talk, “Why it’s so hard to talk about the N-word,” is here [https://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_stordeur_pryor_why_it_s_so_hard_to_talk_about_the_n_word]. And Richard Pryor: Live in Concern (1979) can be streamed on YouTube [https://dai.ly/xa7rol0].  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.

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.