BOOK CORNER
By Marissa Wells
Contributing Writer
“Nobody Wants to Talk About It: Race, Identity and The Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations,” by Michael Sidney Fosberg, chronicles the stories of the author’s travels around the country to provoke conversations about race and identity and promote meaningful dialogue.
The timely book was inspired by Fosberg’s one-man play, “Incognito.”
“After facilitating post-show conversations with audience members for the past 15 years, I encountered so many awkward and uncomfortable situations that it led me to develop a set of tools that could help mitigate these encounters,” Fosberg said. “I wanted to offer more help in the form of these tools, to give people an awareness of how to go about creating space for these difficult conversations.”
Fosberg offers readers seven tools they can use to have more meaningful conversations around race and identity. “Each chapter is told with a mix of stories of my travels around the country trying to facilitate dialogues with people about race and identity and how I came about to understand each of these tools,” said the author.
The tools offered inside “Nobody Wants to Walk It” encourage readers to tell their stories, to be comfortable with discomfort, to recognize that there isn’t one way to have conversations around race and identity, practicing forgiveness and other practical tips to foster meaningful dialogue.
“These are things that I discovered as I was facilitating conversations and discovering how people stumbled over these things,” said Fosberg. “If we used these tools we could probably eliminate the roadblocks in having more meaningful conversations.”
“Nobody Wants to Talk About It” will be enjoyed by a universal audience as it addresses something readers engage in everyday: communication.
“I hope readers will come away from reading my book understanding that we have more in common than we have different and that these conversations are vital to our overall collective health,” Fosberg said.
In addition to being an author, Fosberg continues to present his play, “Incognito,” and offer diversity training for corporations and more. He is based in Chicago. For more information about the author and his work, visit incognitotheplay.com.
“Nobody Wants to Talk About It: Race, Identity and The Difficulties in Forging Meaningful Conversations” is available for $22.50 (paperback) or $8.99 (digital) via incognitotheplay.com or Amazon.com.
