The Kevin Powell Reader: Essential Writings and Conversations

A hopeful and insightful collection by one of the great voices of our time

“Here is a book to read and a writer to watch. Obviously Kevin Powell has the talent to see and the courage to say. He truly keeps it real.” —Maya Angelou on Keeping It Real

“A raw, deeply painful accounting of a life born of poverty, racism, abandonment, abuse, and complicated love . . . Powerful, brave, and unforgettable.” —V (formerly Eve Ensler) on The Education of Kevin Powell

“Kevin Powell is pushing to bring, as he has so brilliantly done before, the voices of his generation: the concerns, the cares, the fears, and the fearlessness.” —Nikki Giovanni on Step Into a World

Kevin Powell is one of the most prolific and acclaimed American writers, thinkers, activists, and public speakers of the past three decades. His writings are important contributions to our national conversations on race, gender, class, politics, pop culture, celebrity, hip-hop, and the past, present, and future of the United States.

The Kevin Powell Reader is an electric and deeply inspiring selection from Powell’s lifework, spanning the Reagan-Bush years of AIDS and crack epidemics to our current era framed by the COVID-19 pandemic; the tragic killing of George Floyd; the #MeToo movement; and much more. In a journey that has produced fifteen books, countless cover stories, hundreds of published pieces, and definitive writings on iconic figures like Stacey Abrams, Dave Chappelle, Kerry Washington, Sidney Poitier, Cicely Tyson, Kobe Bryant, Tupac Shakur, Aretha Franklin, and Kendrick Lamar, Powell is a voice for our times, and a voice that is timeless.

This collection also tracks Powell’s personal struggles and his unwavering honesty about himself and the world around him. The Kevin Powell Reader captures twenty-first-century America with hope, insight, and the urgent need to preserve freedom and justice for all people.