THE BOOK
With illustrations by John Seabury
Miss Experience White is an illustrated, surrealistic political poem cycle about destroying the demon of white supremacy, or “Tyrannosaurus Wonderbread,” and dealing with privilege.
Featuring 20 full color illustrations in different styles by Grammy-nominated illustrator John Seabury, this radical work of autofiction, is designed to look like a children’s book but made for adults. (132 pages, hardcover only, $29.95)
“In this brave incantation, Milo Starr Johnson ... has taken the sweep of history and paused the river for us to view, to digest, and heed our historical task.”
“At times a story, a song, a rant, a field report of the poetic mind, this piece lays claim to an accounting and cleansing of the American experience for this writer in search of an answer to our own brutality and violence. The landscape is vast, but language frees us.”
“This collection is deeply true, good to read, and visually rich.”
Through a series of visions and revelations plus a decisive ancestral inventory, the eponymous narrator arrives at a new understanding of her inner landscape as it meets the changing outer landscape of America.
Johnson began writing obsessively in 2018 when she saw what Donald Trump was bringing out in many White people and the harm it was causing to so many others. Using a variety of accesssible poetic forms, Johnson reveals how Whites like herself with deep ancestral roots in America might work through feelings of shame, discomfort, and ambivalence to transform them into positive, constructive actions.
The podcast version of Miss Experience White won several awards including a Signal Gold Award for Best Fiction in a Limited Series and a w3 Silver Award for Cause Awareness in a Miniseries.
Exclusively for the book, Johnson added the appendix, “Your Fire Goes Here: How to Do Your Own Bonfire of the Ancestors,” a set of instructions for a fire purification ritual created for Americans with problematic ancestors.
Is the core of the White American experience a fundamental fear of change? Or perhaps a seed of enlightenment demanding we evolve?
Read Miss Experience White to find out.
Milo Starr Johnson is a writer, award winning producer, and multidisciplinary artist. She is a critically acclaimed playwright and performer as well as a singer/songwriter. A seeker by nature, she specializes in creating personal and provocative work advocating for change.
John Seabury is a Grammy-nominated illustrator and designer. His art is featured in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame Library collection and his work for Arhoolie Records resides in the Smithsonian Institution collection. He is a founding member of the historic Berkeley punk band, Psycotic Pineapple and the creator of their mascot, Pynoman.
Both Milo and John have ancestors going back in American history. As Milo writes in the book’s introduction, “As artists, both of us like to find the conceptual sore spot and hit it with a hammer.”