Join us for a reading in celebration of Sean Enfield’s essay collection, Holy American Burnout! (Split/Lip Press, 2023) Sean Enfield will be joined by Tim Knapp, Rebecca Baumann, Ty Newcomb, JT Lachausse, Elias Sepulveda, and H Warren.

Sean Enfield delves into the great American condition: burnout

Threading his experiences both as a Texan student and later as a first-year teacher of predominately Muslim students at a Texas middle school, Holy American Burnout! weaves personal essay and cultural critique into the historical fabric of Black and bi-racial identity.

Enfield intersects examinations of which voices are granted legitimacy by virtue of school curriculum, the complex relationship between basketball and education for Black and brown students, his students’ burgeoning political consciousness during the 2016 presidential campaign, and cultural figures ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Hamlet.

These classroom narratives weave around Enfield’s own formative experiences contending with a conflicted bi-racial family lineage, reenacting the Middle Passage as the only Black student in his 7th grade history class, and moshing in both Christian and secular hardcore pits.

As Enfield wrestles with the physical, mental, and emotional burdens that American society places on educators, students, and all relatively conscious minorities in this country, he reaches for an education that better navigates our burnt-out empire.

Sean Enfield is an essayist, poet, gardener, bassist, and educator from Dallas, TX. His writing attempts to find connection through music and words as reclamation of labor as community care and as resistance to the many forces of white supremacy working against marginalized bodies. You can find his work at seanenfield.com.

Reading: Sean Enfield & Friends