About the Book
Best fiction podcast gold award winner, Miss Experience White is an illustrated, surrealistic political poem cycle about destroying the demon of white supremacy and dealing with white privilege.
The book version, with 20 full color illustrations in different styles by Berkeley artist John Seabury, is designed to look like a children's book but made for adults. Using a variety of accessible poetic forms, Johnson reveals how Whites like herself with deep ancestral roots in the U.S. might work through feelings of shame, discomfort, and ambivalence to transform them into positive, constructive actions.
The dramatic podcast version won several awards in 2022 including a Signal Gold Award for Best Fiction in a Limited Series and a w3 Silver Award for Cause Awareness in a Miniseries.
As described in the Introduction, 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.
The Prologue begins:
"In 2016 / The reptiles ate my cousins / But that was Florida / I thought I was safe here"
In Part I, "Vision & Revelation," Miss Experience White clumsily summons the demon of white supremacy, Tyrannosaurus Wonderbread, and his Pearly White Retinue, calling them out with the best of intentions. In the satirical poem "Reptile Show," some of these monsters bear a resemblance to living political figures-and one family in particular. These magical exploits lead her to a harsh and heroic realization.
Part II, "Bonfire of the Ancestors," chronicles the roots and growth of white supremacy and privilege in her ancestral lines. By purifying her historical awareness, Experience creates a clear warrior consciousness to fight Wonderbread and win. Johnson spent months researching her own ancestry for this epic poem. 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.
Part III, "The Other Feast," begins with "Thanksgiving with the Whites," the familiar family fight over politics expressed as a war of limericks. Next comes the phantasmagoric battle to defeat Tyrannosaurus Wonderbread and his Retinue juxtaposed against real-life stories about othering and recognizing privilege. 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.
About the Author :
Milo Starr Johnson is a California-based writer and multidisciplinary artist: a poet, playwright, performer, producer, and indie-pop singer-songwriter. As co-producer, writer, and performer of the podcast version of Miss Experience White, she won a 2022 Signal Gold Award for Fiction in a Limited Series and a 2022 Silver w3 Award for Cause Awareness in a Miniseries. Other poems have been published in Insurgent Imagination #1 and Sparring Artists 2. As playwright and performer, her self-produced solo theater productions received an L.A. Times Best Bet and LA Weekly Pick of the Week. The Perambulator, her album of original retro 60s- and 70s-inspired pop songs garnered praise from music reviewers and industry professionals. A seeker by nature, she specializes in creating provocative and personal work advocating for change with love and mischief. She is a fifth generation Californian with ancestors going back to colonial America. John Seabury is a Grammy-nominated illustrator and designer. His work is featured in the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame Library collection, internationally acclaimed publications like The Art of Rock (1987) and The Art of Modern Rock (2004), and in a broad constellation of promotional material for iconic musicians including Radiohead, George Clinton, Devo, The Damned, Kevin Gilbert, Todd Rundgren, and The Mars Volta. His work for Arhoolie Records now resides in the Smithsonian Institution collection. He has produced hundreds of posters, album covers, and T-shirt designs. He is a founding member of the historic Berkeley punk band Psycotic Pineapple and creator of their mascot, Pynoman. As a bass player in many other bands, he's been active in the San Francisco Bay Area music community for decades. Like the author, he has ancestors going far back in American history.
Review :
"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."
-Tongo Eisen-Martin, eighth poet laureate of San Francisco emeritus
"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."
-Luis Alfaro, playwright, 1997 MacArthur Fellow
"This collection is deeply true, good to read, and visually rich."
-K Shuck, seventh poet laureate of San Francisco emerita
"Milo Starr Johnson . . . throws several translucent blankets of experience over the history of America . . . The words are beautifully illustrated by the incomparable art of John Seabury."
-Ron Turner, founder and publisher, Last Gasp
"With utmost sensitivity, clairvoyance, and transcendent thinking, Milo Starr Johnson has, after years of arduous contemplation, editing, and revision, penned a volume that I think you will truly understand and enjoy."
-V. Vale, publisher, RE/Search Publications
"As a White reader, especially one with ancestry on this continent going back to the pre- Revolution era, I found these passages to be gripping and energized with shame and rage; I was very glad they'd been written, and I suspect that reaction will be shared by readers of many backgrounds and colors."
-Richard Loranger, author of Mammal and Unit of Agency
"Miss Experience White offers a transformative vision of how shame and discomfort can be channeled into meaningful action, inviting readers to reflect on their own roles in the evolving landscape of America."
-Richard Modiano, director emeritus, Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center
