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Figure 1 Book cover for Black Public Joy, written by Jay Pitter and published by McClelland and Stewart (2026). Image provided by McClelland and Stewart.
Given the daily white supremacist attacks against Black folks (and everyone else) Black Public Joy: No Permit or Permission Required is a balm for the exhausted soul. In this recently published book, author Jay Pitter, a Jamaican-Canadian public space practitioner and researcher, explores Black public joy not only as a vital form of expression, but as "spatial intelligence, ritual practice, cultural knowledge, and a form of infrastructure that has shaped public life across generations".
As a former Toronto public housing kid, Pitter draws upon her