CANR

• Black Genius: Essays on an American Legacy - 2025 Dutton Books, New York, NY

• Tre Johnson website - https://www.trejohnsonwriter.com/

  The first essay I ever published was in my elementary school's newsletter. It was on Christopher Columbus, I was in the 1st grade, and when my Mom read it out loud in my Nana & Pop-Pop's living room, the last word—'destiny'—is one of the two things I remember from that moment. The other is the look of pride in my Mom's eyes. I wanted to be a writer after that. Since then, I've left all kind words about Columbus, but I've stayed with writing. I'm in love with words and the worlds inside and outside of them. I love the love, I love the fear, I love the bravery, I love the questions, and I love the thinking of words, writing, books, poems, comic books, and screenplays.

  Everywhere I've gone I've written. I took workshops and creative writing classes in my undergrad years at the University of Maryland College Park. When I moved to Houston to teach high school English, I created a writing group with some of the teachers I was friends with, and we'd sit at Barnes & Noble or cafes around the city comparing poems and short stories. When I moved back to the D.C. area, I was the only Black person in an all-white, retiree poetry group that met at a poet's house in Eastern Market. When I moved to Philadelphia, I found my favorite writing group through a Craigslist ad, and when I got tossed from being an ED for Teach For America, I spent my unemployed months making my own mixed-media anthologies—just poems and pictures about being Black and in Philly.

  I got published because one of my Facebook rants snatched a local editor's eyes. My first piece on Prince’s death was published in Philadelphia Magazine, and from there I've written for Rolling Stone, Slate, Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The Grio, Atlanta Blackstar, Vox, Kirkus Reviews, SEEN Journal, Afropunk, blogs, and newsletters. Between writing projects, I still write little reviews on music, movies, video games, and comic books on IG.

  My words have gotten me on TV and podcasts, including CBS This Morning, CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, CNN Live with Laura Coates, NPR Morning Edition, and Pop Pantheon. I've been a keynote speaker and lecturer at St. Mary's College of Maryland, the University of Pennsylvania, and Lewis & Clark College. I've been a guest speaker (complete with some cussing) at private schools, Harvard, KIPP Schools, and education conferences and convenings.

  I've interviewed people on stage and off as a panel critic and moderator for TV and film festivals. I've ghostwritten and collaboratively written. I want to do more and I want to do it all. At the heart of everything in my writing is trying to find a new story about how to make sense of the world. About how much and how little time we have.

  When I'm not writing, I'm reading. When I'm not reading, I'm writing. But I'm also taking photographs, traveling, spending time with people who drive me crazy but make me laugh, cuddling with my cat, and walking miles around whatever city I'm in. You'll know it's me because you'll hear my laugh about a mile before you see me.

• Write Now Philly - https://writenowphilly.com/defining-black-genius-with-tre-johnson/

  Defining Black Genius with Tre Johnson

  ArticlesProfile
  Posted on September 4, 2025 | by Brendan Smith
  Tre Johnson was born in Trenton, NJ and now finds himself in Philadelphia, where he writes with a focus on race, culture and politics. His work has appeared in The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Vox, The New York Times, Slate, Vanity Fair, The Grio, and other outlets. He has appeared to provide media commentary on CNN Tonight with Don Lemon; CBS Morning Show; PBS NewsHour, NPR’s Morning Edition, and other programs. In addition to writing, Tre is a career educator, beginning working both inside and outside in the classroom as a teacher and eventually as a leader in the sector.

  Brendan Smith: Can you give a brief overview of what Black Genius is about and what concepts you introduce throughout the book.

  Tre Johnson: So, Black Genius, the way I talked about it, is a nonfiction debut book of essays looking at the cultural context in which Black American and Black genius operates in American society. And for me, I wanted to do a couple of things. I wanted to, one, challenge the notion of the word “genius” because I feel like everyone has a fixed definition of what genius might mean. And two, I wanted to explore what it looks like to celebrate and love black ingenuity in life, at all levels and all identities. I just wanted to look at both very concrete things, but also abstract ways in which we are innovative and truly ingenious about how we make it to and through an American–life context. That’s why the book is kind of split up the way it is. There are very concrete things like digital age, there’s comic books, and graphic novels. There’s the education world. But there’s also slightly more abstract things like surveillance, performance, and celebration.

  BS: Were there any approaches you took while writing to make the book culturally specific to black readers, but also to make it more accessible to a wider audience?

  TJ: I think specificity always helps. That’s why I took on things like flash mobs and the ATV tried bike culture. Or looking at very explicitly black things like the Odunde Festival, because I wanted to ground stories and perspectives in ways that I know were going to be closest to black experience, while also hopefully informing people who are outside of it how to appreciate and observe these things. Particularly, if you’re maybe somebody who’s not gonna be inclined to go into some of these cultural spaces. Some of it’s just about, how do we appreciate the humanity in the black experience at all levels, despite or especially when it might be uncomfortable for people. And so, I wanted to be thinking about how you encourage people to see us more fully instead of holding up all these detours about why we’re not worth it.

  BS: Can you talk a little bit about your writing? I know for me, I have to write at a very specific time and space. But what’s your process like?

  TJ: I would typically go Monday through Friday, 10 AM start, go no later than 7. And probably like a lot of writers, I always tell people that doesn’t mean I’m writing every one of those hours. It means that I need to have that chunk of time available to do something around writing. Sometimes it was working on stuff. Sometimes a successful day was having 9 hours set aside to fix two or three pages of the book. But I think the biggest part of my process had to include being compassionate to myself. I’ve never written a book before. It’s long. It’s hard. It’s confusing. It’s not linear, and so the best thing I can do is give myself rampant time and space in a canvas to approach this book the way that I mentally and emotionally need to. Sometimes it also meant that it would go away. So, I wrote chunks of the book here in Philly, but also worked on chunks of the book in Montreal, DC, New Orleans, Napa Valley, Hawaii. And so that also helped me at times, just removing myself from all of life’s distractions.

  BS: You talked a bit about how the writing process for you wasn’t linear exactly and how concepts came at different times. I know the book sections are structured in a very intentional way, but did you change it throughout the process, or was it something that you needed to remain the same for what you were trying to accomplish?

  TJ: The full initial manuscript that I turned in was 450 pages. The thing I always say is, I’m a first–time book author. Even though I’ve been writing freelance essays for a while. I was a first time Black book writer, writing a book called Black Genius and I was like I cannot **** this up. So, I just put so much in and give them everything that I’m thinking, and then we’re gonna chop it down to what makes sense. I started with what I knew. And then I gave myself the freedom to change my mind and follow where this book takes me. But it means that I’m going to change my mind about a lot of stuff. The earlier drafts didn’t have as much of the abstract chapters that this book has now. Everything before was like “I got to prove to these motherfuckers that black folks are amazing and I know what I’m talking about”, so it moved to such a different place. But that’s because the editor and my agent told me, “You are doing this book because we all believe in your talent and your voice. You need to write the book that you want to write, not the book that you believe other people want you to write or feel like other people are going to accept you writing.” And that was a game changer for me.

  BS: Speaking of your editor and your agent, I read that you were first published because someone read one of your rants on social media. I was wondering how your former writing experiences with things like magazines, but also with your content on social media helped you throughout this new process.

  TJ: I say this to all my friends. If you want to be a writer, you find a way to write every day. For me, it’s about the constant act of writing, critically thinking, engaging, just trying to say different things in different ways. That is what my agent and my editor unlocked in me. They were like, “Look, you have written beautifully and thoughtfully in so many other ways and spaces. You don’t have to become something else in order to do this book. You can access all those things that you have, the ways you have talked about things before.”. And I didn’t believe that for the longest, and I think when I relaxed and listened to them, when I trusted them, and when they convinced me to put myself inside of a book like this, that’s where everything started changing more.

  BS: Are there any other ways you think you’ve grown from the experience of writing Black Genius?

  TJ: I think the biggest thing I’m realizing is the book has taught me to have a greater capacity to love myself and to be kind to myself. I’ve been in so many situations where I’ve had my confidence challenged and taken away from me. It’s been so life changing to do something that feels like it is mine, coming from me, that I get to share with the world. And I’m not doing so by feeding it through other people’s systems and expectations. What’s weird about this year is that this is both the year that my book came out, obviously, but it’s also the year that my dad died. My dad died back in February suddenly. And I think both events now feel linked together for me. What they both have taught me is that it’s a real gift to get a chance to live a life with purpose. I think I was somebody struggling to identify a certain type of purpose for myself. And for whatever it means writing, my dad’s death, and this book coming out have crystallized for me or it’s giving me the confidence to say what I’ve always wanted to be able to say out loud, which is that I’m a writer. I want to write. I think I’m pretty decent at it and I still want to get loads better, but I need to embrace my gifts and I need to be able to do something that I love because so many people spend their entire lives doing all sorts of bullshit that they don’t want to do because they feel like there’s no other choice.

  BS: And lastly, I know that you’re going on tour and have a whole bunch of stuff happening for the current book. But I would hate myself if I didn’t ask, what’s next?

  TJ: I just applied to a residency and one of things they ask you is what do you anticipate working on. And I listed like 4 projects. I don’t know for sure what my next book length project will be. I know what I like genre–wise. I am interested in exploring American vigilantism in society. I also have novel ideas that I want to do about maleness and toxic Internet culture, and there’s a screenplay I’ve started working on, too. I don’t know what’s going to come out first or what’s gonna take the lead. But I’m running parallel tracks, working on a couple different things right now. I just love writing.

Byline: Brandon Tensley

On June 8, thousands of people braved stifling heat and the threat of rain to crowd onto the streets of South Philadelphia. They piled an array of dishes - "Black American Chinese Food," jerk chicken, collard greens - onto their plates. They browsed through stalls selling vibrant jewelry and airbrushed T-shirts featuring the faces of rappers and Black civil rights leaders. They cheered on dance performers.

This was the 50th annual Odunde Festival. Established in 1975 by the late political activist Lois Fernandez, Odunde, which means "Happy New Year" in Yoruba, began as a gathering on a single city block before blossoming in time to cover about 15. The festival is a celebration, a blissful assembling to honor the cultures and traditions of the Black diaspora.

To the cultural critic Tre Johnson, Odunde is also something more. It's an example, Johnson told me as we explored the festival, of Black genius - of Black people's penchant for performing a kind of alchemy, of using our art, our voices, our ingenuity to make our communities better and more joyous. One of his favorite things about Odunde, he said, is that you always bump into someone you know; it's a Black church, of sorts. By my count, we ran into almost a dozen of his friends.

This concept is the subject of Johnson's powerful new book, "Black Genius: Essays on an American Legacy." The volume, a sequence of nine original, interrelated essays, reads as a love letter to Black communities. Johnson - a native of Trenton, New Jersey, who now feels at home in Philadelphia - charts how Black people have leaned into "genius ways of living, creating art, building community or pushing against the boundaries that have been created around us." Throughout, he alternates between cultural criticism and more memoiristic reflection, his own experiences amplifying the vitality of the people and places he writes about, just as they have enlivened him.

You can detect this energy in how Johnson describes Odunde - the source of some of his most cherished childhood moments - as a picturesque tableau: "The Black cowboys strutting down South Philly blocks, a soundstage with throwback R&B acts, the long bins of food, Black people fanning themselves, Black folks holding clothes up against their bodies to measure them, open-door house parties right off South Street, where Black folks mill on tiny city lawns," he writes. It was moving to wander through this scene with him, swaddled in laughter, music and aromas, watched over by alluringly fantastical paintings - say, of Martin Luther King Jr. having coffee with Barack Obama - that were never too far away.

Another example of genius that Johnson offers is even closer to home: his uncle Alan, who grew up in Trenton in the 1960s, the youngest of three kids. Alan was so far ahead of his elementary school peers that he often misbehaved out of boredom. Eventually, he persuaded his family to let him transfer to Princeton Day School, a blue-chip private school in New Jersey that gave him a scholarship and where his classmates hailed from uber-wealthy families.

Like a fish out of water, Alan floundered. He didn't fit in with those classmates, who talked about vacationing in Aspen; the second week of school, a White boy called Alan the n-word. And back home, people started to see him as a snob. Alan was angry. To survive in both worlds, he learned to control his emotions. ("You can't body-slam" everyone who slings a slur at you, Johnson writes.) Alan graduated at the top of his class and went to the University of Pennsylvania, where he wrote a paper on what he called his "streemal" (street and formal) education.

Alan's trajectory, his way of finding something redemptive even when he wasn't welcome, could only be genius, Johnson told me as we sat on a porch - stoops and sidewalks become benches during Odunde - chowing down on soul food. Alan, he added, is scrawny - "five foot and half a thought" - but tough, smart and sensitive, and this combination helped him to succeed. Johnson speaks in much the same way that he writes: His sentences are animated, rhythmic, brimming with the full scope of human emotion. "This genius stuff isn't just locked in a kind of cerebral-ness," he said. "Emotions are an equally valid part of how people digest things and create things. I wanted to pay tribute to that part of his experience."

This democratic view of genius - the recognition that many sorts of brilliance illuminate the world - distinguishes Johnson's book from those that would merely point out examples of erudition and accomplishment. But he didn't start with this capacious approach. In an early pitch, he proposed interrogating genius by looking at great Black artists - Prince, Beyoncé and so on. An editor, though, challenged Johnson to also reach beyond the "celebrity stuff," which Johnson had assumed would be the only way readers would tune in or a publisher would take interest. That nudge, it turned out, was everything.

"Our conversation gave me permission to think differently," said Johnson, whose writing influences include comic books, poetry and science fiction novels. Even when he writes about going to see "Black Panther" or attending a Solange concert, he's less interested in what happens on screen or stage (though that all matters to him, too, tremendously) than in the electricity of the crowd, the way energy crackles from body to body and how that charge explodes outward. "Because, yeah, in my heart of hearts, I just want to talk about us. I find thinking about how we navigate the world - this particular world - every day fascinating," he said.

We see this everyday navigation quite literally when Johnson writes about what he calls the "Black Mad Maxes on their steeds." These are Black people riding ATVs, dirt bikes and tri bikes, roaring around Philadelphia. Part of what Johnson loves about these showboaters - "celebrating summer, celebrating payday, celebrating being able to take your love out on a ride," as he puts it - is that their impromptu motorcades are such a provocative response to the squeeze of gentrification, carving out exuberant spaces of noise and speed in a world that tries to push them out. "When you dare to stunt around town, it comes with the territory that you'll create some havoc," Johnson writes. "But this is a good thing in my eyes, a beautiful thing; you're made to watch how these riders have cracked the code of their city living."

There's a propulsive quality to Johnson's book that emerges out of his passion for the people and places he's discussing. You feel as if you're right there with him, whether he's recalling a visit to Maori Karmael Holmes's BlackStar Film Festival, which "transforms Philly's cultural spaces into an ephemeral Chocolate City," or recounting a trip to New Iberia, Louisiana, where Black residents are "rehabbing" the city and not letting it "settle for a flat history" that elides its racist past. Johnson pulls from a bottomless well of affection for Black culture and contributions, and this love is as palpable as it is infectious.

A few hours into Odunde, Johnson and I stood on a corner, mulling options for another meal while a group of chiseled guys on the other side of the street tried to best one another in a pull-up contest. As a couple of Johnson's friends spotted him and joined us, it started to rain. But everyone was determined to stick it out, popping open umbrellas instead of retreating home. This magnetic pull was, to me, as pure an expression of the power of Odunde as I could imagine. And it got at what Johnson means by "Black genius," too, this way of finding joy together, whether conditions are gloomy or the clouds are parting. Because to everyone there that afternoon, those South Philadelphia blocks were home.

- - -

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Tensley, Brandon. "Tre Johnson's vital, democratic vision of Black genius." Washington Post, 31 July 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A849985473/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1cf4c3cb. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

Johnson, Tre. Black Genius: Essays on an American Legacy. Dutton. Jul. 2025. 320p. ISBN 9780593186473. $30. SOC SCI

Cultural critic Johnson opens his debut essay collection by noting that Black people are always left out of conversations about genius. Yet, as he argues and illustrates, Black genius is evident everywhere throughout the United States and is at the heart of American ingenuity. Black Americans inventively and relentlessly surviving and thriving exemplify genius--transforming necessity into virtue in all creative fields. Corporate mass production has continually co-opted Black creations and popularly obscured their roots. Yet appropriation, cultural extraction, gentrification, and policies to roll back advances have failed to diminish the power of Black Americans' experiences and perspectives or efface authentic, unquestionably distinct, original Black genius, Johnson insists. His examples gloss over the more familiar household names of Black luminaries from the arts, academia, entertainment, and politics, instead choosing to highlight Black genius in unexpected spaces, ranging from comic books, graphic novels, and street art to the culinary arts and streetwear design. VERDICT Johnson's shout-out to and about Black people is both a call for Black pride and an invitation for readers of all backgrounds to broaden their definitions of genius and recognize the unexamined intersections and unfamiliar corners in their lives that evidence Black creativity, intelligence, and humanity.--Thomas J. Davis

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
Davis, Thomas J. "Johnson, Tre. Black Genius: Essays on an American Legacy." Library Journal, vol. 150, no. 6, June 2025, pp. 102+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A847199309/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8a7de902. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

Johnson, Tre BLACK GENIUS Dutton (NonFiction None) $30.00 7, 29 ISBN: 9780593186473

A spirited presentation of the manifold accomplishments of Black creators as an instrument of resistance--and of love.

"We're utterly amazing, yet Black folks are consistently, persistently, intentionally, conveniently, diabolically left out of conversations about genius all the time." So cultural critic and commentator Johnson observes at the outset of this collection of essays, returning to the theme at several points, as when he writes of sitting in a New Orleans restaurant where everything but the clientele was Black: "It all brought up the issues around appropriation, cultural extraction, gentrification and the sort of darkâhumor irony of how often our music is good enough but we aren't." The author's humor is underscored with righteous indignation, as when he writes of going from a private church school where "as Black kids a lot of us thrived because we had a strong mixture of play, practice and positivity (prayer, too, obviously)" to a public middle school and high school where his abilities were constantly demeaned by white classmates and teachers--cause for his call to pay attention today to young Black students who "might've shown up with B or C grades but had A+ curiosity and social skills and the ability to think on their feet." Johnson celebrates the Black genius that society throttles through a wide range of examples, from comic books to music (with a lovely remembrance of the peace-and-love groove of the Fifth Dimension and even an understanding word or two for Kanye West) and from comic Dick Gregory toBlack Panther. Johnson even closes with a sort of Aquarian evocation of a Black community that is truly communal, one that can "afford opportunities to make choices in community with others and minimize some of the additional risks of trying and discovering things on your own," creating into the future in common cause.

Readers will leave this provocative book wanting to hear much more from Johnson.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"Johnson, Tre: BLACK GENIUS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A839213369/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=686b9883. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

Tensley, Brandon. "Tre Johnson's vital, democratic vision of Black genius." Washington Post, 31 July 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A849985473/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1cf4c3cb. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025. Davis, Thomas J. "Johnson, Tre. Black Genius: Essays on an American Legacy." Library Journal, vol. 150, no. 6, June 2025, pp. 102+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A847199309/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8a7de902. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025. "Johnson, Tre: BLACK GENIUS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 May 2025. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A839213369/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=686b9883. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.

Word Count