WHO WILL PAY REPARATIONS ON MY SOUL? author Jesse McCarthy is a 2022 Whiting Award winner. The selection committee writes: “Jesse McCarthy’s thought arrows through time periods, belief systems, literary movements, and aesthetics. His observations on the intersections of history, pop culture, and Black personhood roll over us like an incoming storm of gorgeous sentences. He is not afraid to stake out arguments and hold positions, but he is more interested in exploration than in polemic and wants above all to honor political and literary complexity. These are clutch-your-throat essays, revelatory, resonant, and uncompromising. Dazzling is the only word.” Liveright published the book on March 30, 2021.