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Welcome to the LRB podcast. I'm your host, Adam Schatz. My guest today is Jesse McCarthy,

the author of an arresting new book of essays on black literature, art, and politics.

Who will pay reparations on my soul? Jesse is a professor of English and African American Studies at Harvard. He's also an editor at the point where many of the essays first appeared.

His first novel, Fugitivities, will be published in June. Jesse is one of the most elegant

and incisive writers on black diasporic culture today, steeped in

history and tradition, but equally conversant in contemporary culture from the art of Kara Walker

and Ken De Wiley to hip-hop and trap music. Jesse, thanks for joining us today on the LRP podcast.

Hi, Adam. Thanks. It's really great to be with you. Now, you can't tell a book from its cover,

but the cover of your book is, in fact, a succinct and expressive guide to your preoccupations.

I'd like to start by asking you about the haunting image of Juan de Pereja, a former slave who

became a painter by Velasquez. Tell us a little bit about this Juan Di Pereja. So Juan DiPereja was an assistant,

but also an assistant to Velazquez, but also an enslaved person of African descent working in

Spain, originally from Sevilla. And, you know, I first came across, I would say, his image

at the Met. There's this absolutely magnificent portrait of De Pereja that you can go see in the

Met in New York City, hopefully once it's open again, or maybe it is open again.

It is.

And so it's an image that I'd actually seen before, but never really thought that much about

...