How Far to the Promised Land with Esau McCaulley

The Preamble

Sharon McMahon

Government, History, Storytelling, Education

4.9 • 15.1K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2023

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today’s episode, Sharon is joined by Esau McCaulley for a powerful conversation about his new book, How Far to the Promised Land. In his memoir, he took the story of his family and showed the struggles of Black people in America intergenerationally.

Esau shares how it’s vital to understand how the stories of our ancestors – though they might seem insignificant – impact and shape generations to come. In a country that highly values “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps,” and the underdog, Esau questions the narrative that we achieve entirely on our own, and asks why our society requires exceptionalism from Black people.

Special thanks to our guest, Esau McCaulley, for joining us today.

Host/Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon

Guest: Esau McCaulley

Audio Producer: Jenny Snyder

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello friends, welcome. As always, delighted that you're joining me. My guest today is
0:09.8	written an absolutely beautiful book that I found so moving. I told him that I was tearing
0:18.3	up in the first few pages, and I just cannot wait to share this conversation with Esa
0:24.2	while calling. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and here's where it gets interesting.
0:34.5	I am really excited to be chatting with Esa today. Thank you so much for being here.
0:38.6	Thank you for having me on the podcast. I read your book. I was very moved by it. I thought to
0:44.7	myself as I was reading it like this man is a fantastic writer, and it took the story of your
0:50.5	family who I don't know anything about them, and I just really wanted to find out what happened.
0:57.2	I was emotionally invested in the outcome of your family story, and I just really, really enjoyed
1:05.4	it. I think it took me like just a couple hours to read the whole thing. Like that's how compelling
1:09.9	I found it. So congrats on an amazing job with it. Thank you. It's an honor to have anybody read
1:17.2	my family story and to think that someone who never met me might be interested in my cousins
1:21.8	and aunties and uncles and my grandparents and great grandparents and all those other people
1:26.2	that you meet in the story. I love them. Like they are people who are really important to me,
1:31.0	and they made me into the person that I am. And so I wanted people to see them. And by saying
1:36.7	them, see the south and by saying the south, see black people in America. And so the whole goal
1:42.0	of the book is the people who you don't think are important have lives that are significant.
1:46.9	And they shouldn't be tossed to the south. I love that. Do you ever think about this? Do
1:51.7	you ever think about like if my ancestors could see me now, you know, like the people from 200 years
1:58.5	ago, 150 years ago of like look at him, college professor, New York Times writer writing books,
2:05.6	being interviewed on all kinds of shows in the podcast. Like if they could see me now, think of
2:11.0	how proud they are of you in this moment. There is a moment in the book where I talk about the
	...

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