We are joined by Frank B. Wilderson III to discuss ‘Afropessimism’ and the broader developments and insights to his work and fellow thinkers. Interview by Dustin Breitling.

Frank B. Wilderson III is chair of African American Studies, a core faculty member in the Culture & Theory Ph.D. Program at UC Irvine, and an award-winning writer whose books include Afropessimism (Liveright/W.W. Norton 2020) Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid (Duke University Press 2015), and Red, White, & Black: Cinema and the Structure of U.S. Antagonisms (Duke University Press 2010). He spent five and a half years in South Africa, where he was one of two Americans to hold elected office in the African National Congress during the apartheid era. He also was a cadre in the underground. His literary awards include The American Book Award; The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Creative Nonfiction; The Maya Angelou Award for Best Fiction Portraying the Black Experience in America; and a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. Wilderson was educated at Dartmouth College (A.B Government and Philosophy), Columbia University (MFA/Fiction Writing), and UC Berkeley (PhD/Rhetoric).

Diffractions Collective · Afropessimism w/Frank B. Wilderson III