writer. artist. activist. facilitator. podcaster.

Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist

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Advance Praise

Reagan Jackson is the most important writer you might not have read yet. If a cat has nine lives, Jackson’s living ten. She’s in a Veracruz hotel room watching the Ferguson protests unfold on CNN. She’s in Seattle’s CHOP district in the summer of 2020 leading a Black healing event. If she’s not starting up a study abroad program for students of color or summing up with stunning clarity the epic drain of a “well intended white person” (see Page 81!), she’s learning to box, dance burlesque, and surf. And whatever country Jackson travels to or whatever theatre, comedy show, or lecture she attends, she listens, introducing us to voices we don’t often hear who speak of oppression, liberation, and hope. Reagan Jackson’s stories in Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist drop us right onto the fault lines where plates are converging, where our culture—our very world—is being forged into something new. And with brilliant insight, candor, and vulnerability, Jackson shares the moments with us. We are there—right there—with her, as she shows us with precision and grace who we are and who we have yet to become.
— Theo Pauline Nestor, author of Writing Is My Drink
In “Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist,” Reagan Jackson bears powerful witness to a city she aims to shape into a truer and more human reflection of its peoples. Her essays provide necessary testimony that shores up our collective resolve in perilous times.
— Kristen Millares Young
Still Here: A Southend Mixtape from an Unexpected Journalist is a vibrantly, herstorical, rageful ritual of essays. Each ritual a gift “…for Black people to come together in the privacy of our own communities to laugh, and cry, to dance and love and enjoy. “It will be difficult for readers to choose their favorite experiential track from Jackson’s mixtape of essays but it won’t be hard for readers to perform each ritual, hands holding hearts first, and profusely nodding along.
— Anastacia-Renee
The great Robin Kelley calls Still True ‘an abolitionist take on space and power—a desire to make the space we call earth habitable and bountiful for all life,’ a beautiful description that rings 100% true. The intensely local pieces uplifted me, depressed me, but I add an enthusiastic thank you to Reagan Jackson for reminding us of the value—for People of Color, especially for Black Americans—of knowing the world beyond the USA. Jackson’s take on the world is lifesaving, one of the many gifts of this fine book’s authentic journalism.
— Nell Irvin Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Emerita, Princeton University