“Rage” Offers a Sardonic Take on Modern Life: 'I'm Mad at Injustice in All Its Forms' (Exclusive)

The 'Entertainment Weekly' writer's new book is part memoir, part cultural critique and all perfect for the present moment

Lester Fabian Brathwaite's new essay collection blends searing cultural critique with gallows humor for anyone who's feeling some kind of way lately.

Rage: On Being Black, Queer, Brilliant ... and Completely Over It, out now from Tiny Reparations Books, is "a darkly comedic exploration of Blackness, queerness and the American Dream, at a time when creative anger feels like the best response to inequality," the book's synopsis reads.

The book takes us through everything from the Entertainment Weekly writer's "tragic-comedic" love life and how it does — and mostly doesn't — match up with what Hollywood led him to value, as well as representations of queer life on shows like RuPaul's Drag Race and in the LGBTQ+ classic The Birdcage. He also goes deep on icons like James Baldwin, Whitney Houston, Nina Simone and more, with commentary on what we can learn from them.

Below, in an exclusive excerpt from Rage shared with PEOPLE, Brathwaite reckons with our culture's response to living in our modern age.

I guess I’m struggling with my faith in America, in the world. In the broadest, most general terms. As if America is one thing, as if the world could be easily reduced to a single idea. I struggle sometimes with defining what it is I’m mad at because it feels like everything is terrible. I’m mad at injustice in all its forms, and I’m mad at Americans’ increasing indifference to the truth, and I’m mad at indifference toward climate change. I’m mad at war, at microaggressions, at macroaggressions. I’m mad at white men for existing, mad at white men for not wanting me, at white women for being complicit. I’m mad at Black people for not rising up and taking what is ours, I’m mad at myself for not doing more, for not caring more, for not wanting to be better.

I’m mad because I can’t get the boy I want, or the recognition I want, or the body I want. I’m mad because this rage is all I’ve ever known and because I know that if I wanted to, I could scream as easily as taking a breath. I’m mad because I don’t know what else to feel when everything feels too much and not enough. I’m mad that I have also grown numb to the way things are and will always be and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s all so big and so much to consider and so overwhelming.

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But I don’t have to face these issues all alone. I couldn’t if I wanted to. And none of us should have to face the problems of the world alone because we all live in the world, together. It is in the best interest of everyone to see that this ship doesn’t sink. We have to shake ourselves free of apathy and despair and get mad at the assholes keeping us from a healthy planet, from robust education, from healthcare, from a living wage, from universal housing, from a world free of poverty and hunger, from basic needs and wants that we can almost all agree on but are led to believe are impossible.

Collective rage is our only chance for survival.

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In 2008, diva shaman Erykah Badu came out with her third studio album, New Amerykah, Part One: 4th World War, a rumination on the American Dream’s failures for Black people. On the seventh track, “Twinkle,” Badu modernizes Peter Finch’s prescient monologue as mad-as-hell anchor Howard Beale from 1976’s Network.

“I want you to get mad!” Beale originally says. “I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot. I don’t want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first, you’ve got to get mad. You’ve gotta say, ‘I’m a human being, god------! My life has value!’ " Badu’s version repeats Beale’s speech nearly word for word because it remains far too prescient, even nearly 50 years later.

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To be angry is to be aware. On the following track, “Master Teacher,” Badu coined the term “woke,” as in “I stay woke.” Rage effectively leads to an a-wokening. “Woke” has since been coopted by ruddy- faced racists turned fascists — congresspeople, governors, former presidents — as the symbol of everything they’re fighting against, which is true: they detest, they fear enlightenment. Those ruddy- faced racists want to keep their followers ignorant and dim to maintain their own power.

They want you to be angry, too, but at one another, not at them. They want us to be mad at superficial differences, at stupid things that don’t matter, rather than at the deep institutional flaws they ignore to our great detriment. Politicians know the power of rage. They are imperfect vessels for change, but they should not be mistaken as the agents of change. They are merely people charged with doing a job, and if they suck at it, they shouldn’t be doing it.

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But the job is to serve the will of the people, not to serve their own whims. And the people have very basic needs — food, shelter, healthcare and education that’s actually affordable and maybe a planet that’s not trying to actively get rid of us because we’re killing it — that are not being met. So what are we doing about it? While it’s imperative that we hold our elected officials accountable, moreover, we have to resist the stubborn human desire for a savior.

No one person can save us. No one person has the answers. We have to give enough of a damn to save our f------ selves. We can’t ignore our rage or succumb to it, but we must live with it consciously. We have to get mad as hell and refuse to take it anymore, as Howard Beale instructed all those decades ago. The only thing is, rage without direction or purpose just creates more chaos. Focused rage, though — that’s some scary s---.

Focused rage can topple institutions, demolish ideologies, rally revolutions, step on the gas of progress or simply destroy us all. In order to survive on this planet together, we have to believe we’re in this together and channel the ever-present rage and anxiety and angst of living in this world in this time into the only thing that matters today: the promise of tomorrow. Without which there’s no will to change, no hope for anything better ... there’s ... nothing. So in the words of every rapper faced with the ubiquitous specter of haters: Stay mad. It might be the only thing that saves us.

From RAGE: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant…and Completely Over It by Lester Fabian Brathwaite, published by Tiny Reparations Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright (c) 2024 by Lester Fabian Brathwaite

Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant ... And Completely Over It by Lester Fabian Brathwaite is available now, wherever books are sold.