Matt Salesses has been a writer for The Good Men Project since day one. Now he has a new book: Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity.
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On the day The Good Men Project first launched, Matthew Salesses was right there with us, with his essay Ouch about his then fiancee. We were almost as excited to launch Matt’s work as we were the website as a whole, are entire editorial staff knew back then that he was destined for greatness. Since then, he’s had an ongoing column “Love, Recorded” that has been chronicle of life since Ouch—a look at how his relationship has gone from engaged to married to married with child. But it has been Matt’s work on racism that has garnered the most attention. His post on The Good Men Project “How the Rules of Racism Are Different for Asian Americans” (originally published on The Rumpus) has gotten shared on Facebook well over a million times. That is a great landmark for any post, but considering the subject is not just racism but a “different racism” than we are used to discussing, it’s downright astounding.
That essay is now one of the cornerstones of a book being published by Thought Catalog in celebration of Asian American Heritage Month. Four of Matt’s essays that were first published in The Rumpus and The Margins, with nearly 80 original footnotes are compiled into an e-book. Yes, we’re too slow to rid the world of racism, but electronic publishing is here to stay.
Matt Salesses is truly a thought leader in this this arena—he’s spoken on Al Jazeera America and PBS, been interviewed in The Chicago Tribune and other papers, and he written for The New York Times, NPR, the Center for Asian American Media, Salon, along with continuing his column at The Good Men Project. He has been writing about race, adoption, and family in an effort to really do something—to create social change.
When Matt emailed the Editors of The Good Men Project to tell them about Different Racisms, he said “I believe in this book.”
We do too.
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Order Matt Salesses Book “Different Racisms: On Stereotypes, the Individual, and Asian American Masculinity” here.