Keith Ellison, author of Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence
Emilie Buchwald Award for Minnesota Nonfiction Category, sponsored by Annette and John Whaley
Each week leading up to the 36th annual Minnesota Book Awards, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
What is one detail you wanted to include in this book, but couldn’t find a place for?
I wanted to include more of George Floyd’s personal story. He really was a well-loved person. Break the Wheel is about creating equal justice, but I wish I could have expanded more on his life. He was born and grew up in segregated communities in North Carolina and Texas. He was a talented rap artist, and he was likely set up and sent to prison in Texas by a dishonest police officer. I want to world to know more about this man, George Perry Floyd.
Tell us about someone who proved instrumental to the creation of this book.
My wife and best friend, Monica Hurtado, is really a co-creator of Break the Wheel. She read passages, and listened to my endless trial team meetings as the prosecution prepared. She tolerated me neglecting her in favor of writing Break the Wheel, from early in the morning or late at night – for six straight months. She was there when I received the video revealing the torture and murder of George Floyd, when the verdicts of guilty came in, and when I opened the mail pouch containing my first galley copy of Break the Wheel. So, God Bless the People who love us and put up with us.
Tell us about a favorite read from the past year. Why did you find it enjoyable, insightful, or memorable?
The people who we adamantly disagree with, and even oppose, are more like us than we feel comfortable admitting. And even when they propose crazy things, like the COVID vaccine is fake, they are responding to real, authentic fears, that we all might have. That is the idea behind Doppelgänger, by Naomi Klein. Anti-vaxxers are wrong, but maybe we all should be suspicious of the pharmaceutical industry. We fear our doppelgängers, i.e., the people who resemble us, but who are not us. But we must not dismiss them. Klein felt this way about about anti-vaxxer, Naomi Wolf, but as she looked a little deeper, she saw some meaningful commonalities, not to be ignored. Great Book. Up there with Shock Doctrine, her best work.
Please tell us something about yourself that is not widely known.
I took up the cello during the COVID pandemic. I am not very good, but I love it.
Share your thoughts about the role and value of libraries.
Libraries were segregated during Jim Crow. It’s because libraries contained freedom and power. They contained knowledge. Libraries hold books, of course, but libraries hold much more, including periodicals of record, culture, and on-line access to the world. Libraries are instruments of liberation, and therefore, are sacred spaces.
Keith Ellison was sworn in as Minnesota’s 30th attorney general on January 7, 2019. From 2007 to 2019, he represented Minnesota’s 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. He is the first African American and the first Muslim American to be elected to statewide office in Minnesota.