Holy American Burnout!

Author: Sean Enfield

Publisher: Split/Lip Press (2023)

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.

“Driven by an empathic imagination and formal invention, Holy American Burnout! is a book of marked complexity and honesty. ‘What do we do with a history we’d rather forget?’ Enfield asks, and then guides us on a sweeping journey across the many landscapes of America—from classroom to mosh pit to open highway—from which we emerge with a more expansive conception of its many historical and ongoing traumas, and how we might heal the wounds without erasing their scars.”

–Sara Eliza Johnson