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)

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 accessible 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?

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

"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