It seems to me we talk endlessly about America—its promise, its failures, its myths—but rarely with the patience or honesty required to examine how those stories were constructed in the first place. We argue about outcomes, about polarization, about decline, about nostalgia, yet seldom interrogate the narratives that taught us who we are supposed to be, who belongs, and who does not. We inherit these myths the way we inherit a language: unchosen, unquestioned, and deeply internalized.
Red, White, and Blues takes its name from the intertwined histories of American identity and American music—particularly the blues, a form born from suffering, endurance, improvisation, and survival. These essays explore how the nation’s cultural DNA is shaped as much by pain and contradiction as by idealism, and how the stories we tell about freedom, individualism, success, and exceptionalism often conceal deeper truths about power, exclusion, and dispossession.
Like the music that inspires it, Red, White, and Blues is interested in tension rather than resolution. It asks how a country founded on liberty learned to coexist so comfortably with inequality. How nostalgia becomes a political weapon. How culture both resists and reinforces domination. How art functions as witness, protest, confession, and sometimes refuge.
What to Expect from This Substack Section
This section seeks not to romanticize America, nor to reduce it to a cautionary tale, but to sit inside its contradictions and listen carefully. To treat culture as evidence. To hear the dissonance beneath the anthem. And by doing so, to create space for more honest conversations about who we have been, who we are, and what we might still become.
Each week I’ll share excerpts from my new book, Red, White, and Blues, and you’ll have access to conversations via my podcast SOME THINGS CONSIDERED.
Since I first began blogging, I’ve believed it’s essential to make my work free and fully accessible. You can buy my books here, but I’ll never charge you to read my occasional ruminations on the free subscription.
About The Author
Sean Murphy is founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts, and directs the Center for Story at Shenandoah University. He has appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" and been quoted in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and AdAge. A long-time columnist for PopMatters, his work has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, The Good Men Project, Writer’s Digest, and others. His chapbook, The Blackened Blues, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. His second collection of poems, Rhapsodies in Blue was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. His third collection, Kinds of Blue, and This Kind of Man, his first collection of short fiction, published in 2024. He has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of Net, and his book Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone was the winner of Memoir Magazine's 2022 Memoir Prize.
Website: seanmurphy.net
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