BOOK LAUNCH - FROM THE BACK OF A BUS NAMED DESIRE

Name: BOOK LAUNCH - FROM THE BACK OF A BUS NAMED DESIRE
Start: 2026-02-03T18:00:00-06:00
Location: Community Book Center

Schedule

Tue, 03 Feb, 2026 at 06:00 pm

UTC-06:00

Location

Community Book Center | New Orleans, LA

Please join the University of New Orleans Press team in celebrating the release of the late Brenda Quant's collection of essays, FROM THE BACK OF A BUS NAMED DESIRE, at the Community Book Center on Tuesday, February 3rd at 6:00 PM.
At the tender age of ten, Brenda Quant became “the happiest criminal in New Orleans” by swinging on the swingset at a whites-only park under her mother’s watchful eye. This was the beginning of a lifelong orientation toward not only social justice, but deep and critical observation of the world around her.
Growing up in the 9th Ward of New Orleans in the 1950s, Brenda Quant witnessed the last gasps of Jim Crow as well as everyday acts of resistance undertaken by relatives and community members. She participated in its demise as both an activist and chronicler, providing commentary on New Orleans life par excellence.
This book reflects a lifetime of experience, and its essays take many forms: a truth-seeking conversation with her ancestor who may or may not have fought as a Black Confederate soldier; a cultural history excavating the tangled roots of rice; and a mélange of fragmented, candid meditations on works of visual art. These essays, which traverse this time and beyond, are her contemplations on the power of pathways, whether those as momentous as diasporic seaways, as quotidian as neighborhood sidewalks, or as intimate as the roundabouts and byways of memory. FROM THE BACK OF A BUS NAMED DESIRE is a keen crosshatching of observation and insight.
Quant earned her MFA from the University of New Orleans at the age of seventy. She died in 2022, leaving the world with this book, which served as her thesis. These essays are contemplations on the power of pathways, whether diasporic seaways or neighborhood sidewalks. With humor, candor, and a diligent curiosity about the world, Brenda Quant’s vision of New Orleans is among the most true of a city whose image precedes it.
“Brenda Quant's essays are a gift to readers. . . . Her many fine essays recount observed inequities on busses through her youth and adulthood, and others are heartening accounts of a long politically responsible life.”
— Randy Bates, author of RINGS: On the Life and Family of a Southern Fighter
We hope you will join us!