Still True

Equal parts personal testament, structural interrogation, and social criticism, Reagan Jackson's Still True inspires in its singularity. Jackson writes with a powerful sense of history and a wide-ranging vision, capturing a Seattle in flux, where processes of inequality, gentrification, and police violence occur alongside community struggle, vivid resistance, and countless episodes of joy. We should all hope that voices like hers blossom throughout our communities. This book is a gift to all readers and writers-aspiring, established, or otherwise. ~Sonora Jha, author of The Laughter

In Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist, Reagan Jackson bears powerful witness to a city she aims to shape into a truer and more human reflection of its peoples. Her essays provide necessary testimony that shores up our collective resolve in perilous times. ~Kristen Millares Young, author of Subduction

In a world desperate for the space/time to respond to change and to reflect on deep continuities, Reagan Jackson's Still Here offers a glimpse of new and renewed forms of connection. Like the mixtapes she evokes in the title, she weaves an emotional and intellectual mosaic out of the fragments of though-in-the-moment. Formally innovative, aware of the ancestral resonances, and just plain smart, this is a book that testifies to a mind and spirit helping us think our way to something beyond the mess we're in. ~Craig Werner, Author of A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America

Never was there a better time than right now to read Reagan Jackson's masterful body of work in "Still True: A Southend Mixtape". What you read in her collection of articles is what happens when a Black journalist does not compromise their identity to do their job. Jackson is a reluctant journalist but we should all be grateful for her contribution to the industry. Her commitment to tell the stories of communities with them and not about them is everything that is missing in our ecosystem today. The book is an examination of life in the Pacific Northwest for BIPOC. Jackson opens the curtain to reveal the impacts of gentrification, economic inequality and the struggle for #BlackLivesMatter in a region where allyship means making room for white people in all spaces. Jackson also masterfully writes about the Black experience abroad and why it's necessary for Black people to become globally engaged. Finally, Jackson excavates her own truths about her body, her beauty and healing from trauma as resistance. Jackson is a talented and gifted writer whose words are moving, challenging, and needed. ~Sonya Green, journalist

Still True: The Evolution of an Unexpected Journalist is a vibrantly, herstorical, rageful ritual of essays. Each ritual a gift "...for Black people to come together in the privacy of our own communities to laugh, and cry, to dance and love and enjoy." It will be difficult for readers to choose their favorite experiential track from Jackson's mixtape of essays but it won't be hard for readers to perform each ritual, hands holding hearts first, and profusely nodding along. ~Anastacia-Renee, Writer, Educator and Archivist

In dark and confusing times, Reagan Jackson's writing is a compass pointing toward liberation. - Alex Stonehill, Co-Founder of the Seattle Globalist, Head of Creative Strategy for the UW Comm Lead Program