The Dead Don’t Need Reminding: In Search of Fugitives, Mississippi, and Black TV Nerd Shit

The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is an inventive, poetic, vulnerable, and deeply sincere work from acclaimed author and poet Julian Randall. Blending memoir, cultural criticism, and personal reflection, this braided narrative explores recovery, family history, grief, and reclamation through the lens of pop culture and memory.

The Dead Don’t Need Reminding follows Randall’s return from the brink of a harrowing depression while also tracing the story of his white-passing grandfather, who was driven from a Mississippi town under threats of tar and feathering.

By weaving together these two deeply personal journeys, Randall transforms familiar pop culture touchstones into intimate meditations on survival, family, and the American experience. Through references to Into the Spider-Verse, Jordan Peele films, BoJack Horseman, and the music of Odd Future, he constructs a vivid emotional landscape that is at once sharp, lyrical, heartbreaking, and wickedly funny.

Pulsing with life and honesty, The Dead Don’t Need Reminding is ultimately a story about reclaiming identity, confronting inherited ghosts, and fighting to stay alive long enough to tell the story.

“Inventive, poetic, vulnerable, and sincere.” — Kirkus Reviews