Escape from the Sunlit Prison of the American Dream is an 84,000-word creative nonfiction book that explores how urban sprawl and slavery’s legacy intertwine to undermine quality of life. (If you’re unfamiliar with the creative nonfiction genre, it’s simply a “true story that is well told.”)
Many Americans are less enamored with the drive-everywhere culture that previous generations embraced. Nielsen—considered the top market research firm in the world—surveyed millennials and found that 62%, want to live in vibrant, walkable cities. This translates to 51 million people in just one generation alone. As an urban planner and a parent who has lived with children in cities both inside and outside the U.S., I clarify why many have a hard time finding such a place.
The book examines interrelated two problems. First is the endless production of bad human habitat, which fractures us socially and is disastrous for us environmentally. Second is a tragic racial history that mars the present in a way that affects not only black Americans but all Americans.
I explore these problems through the lens of personal experience and family history. For example, as an urban planner, I conceived of a major redevelopment policy that incentivized pedestrian-oriented development. I then witnessed how the political process rendered this policy impotent, leaving urban sprawl to prevail. Regarding our tragic past, I’m named in honor of an ancestor who formulated a racial doctrine to extend slavery westward. Implementation of this “Cass doctrine” in 1854 triggered the creation of the Republican Party and produced a civil war.
With this book, I take measure of what we’ve lost in an auto-dependent country where variants of slavery have been practiced for 80% of the time that American culture has been forming (through 1941). In the end, it’s a book about how we feel about places, what we value, what we fear, and what we hate.