Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Bryan Hotchkins.
Hi Dr. Hotchkins, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
In response to COVID-19 and civil unrest around the topic of police brutality, I wrote the book “My Black is Exhausted. Forever in Pursuit of a Racist-free World Where Hashtags Don’t Exist.” The book unpacks how to identify, mediate and track racial exhaustion within the context of popular movies and music. The ultimate purpose is to help readers determine how to create a world that is beyond racism. The writing process started with journaling to make sense of my mortality and understand how to better deal with the depression I experienced as a result of the moment. Eventually, journal notes evolved into 16 clear and concise book chapters that directly speak to how one can navigate the geographies racism while attempting to be whole. Subsequently, book readers asked about book application to their lives so I also wrote “Becoming (Un)Exhausted. An Interactive Journal for Moving Beyond Racism.” Today, I am on a nationwide book tour, which has included the University of Michigan, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville/Carbondale, and Texas A&M University. My next book project begins summer of 2023.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The greatest challenge in book writing is remembering. Although this book is not written in chronological order, the content is transgenerational, partially based on interviews with my elders who do not have total recall. Additionally, discussions about race are often met with resistance as most people are afraid of being labeled racist so arranging the book tour has been challenging.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As a result of writing the book and journal, I also created in 2022, “MY BLACK IS EXHAUSTED: The ART” is an artistic rendering of the book “My Black is Exhausted. Forever in Pursuit of a Racist-free World Where Hashtags Don’t Exist.” While the focus of the digital collection is to offer racialized abstractions of life for art lovers who value the power of conceptual design, the purpose is to use simplistic visuals to facilitate complex realizations about race. The project identifies historic and modern points of racial trepidation to complicate what it means to be Black, Indigenous, or a person of color. The presentation of the art is a 90-minute creative endeavor, a thoughtful exploration about how we see race unfurl and the impact on us. Each picture is used as an artistic tool to track how we feel and what we think about race. The halo effect is that those who are not Black also benefit by processing the imagery therein. I am most proud that during the pandemic, I was the most productive I have ever been within both a professional and personal space. What sets me apart most is that I am a cool professor, who is not beyond reproach.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
It never snows. It could be more diverse and less conservative.
Pricing:
- Book ($25)
- Journal ($15)
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mbiebook.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drbhotchkins/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drbhotchkins
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/DrBHotchkins
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpgXXia8Ldyqm1jf_0Ecaiw
