April Ryan has covered the White House since the Clinton era — the longest-serving Black White House correspondent in history, a run she marked at 29 years this January. She has been in the room for five presidents. But her new book is not about the room. Notes on a Blacklash: When a Black Woman Goes Viral, published October 6 by Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, is about what happens when the room — and then the whole internet — turns on you.

Ryan, the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for The Grio and a CNN political analyst, follows up Black Women Will Save the World with a personal examination of misogynoir: the specific, relentless online bullying aimed at Black women because of both race and gender. The book reaches back to moments that made her a household name against her will — including a 2017 press-room exchange with Press Secretary Sean Spicer that ended with her one-word response, “Lawd,” racing across social media — and traces the avalanche that follows a viral moment: the scrutiny, the emotional and physical toll, and the way a Black woman’s hair, voice and very presence get policed in public.

The argument widens beyond her own feed. Ryan explores how race, gender and power collide in a culture addicted to outrage, from a history-making decision by Vice President Kamala Harris to the public disrespect of Stevie Wonder and the slap heard around the world. At its core, the publisher notes, this is a book about visibility — its price, its power, and the fight to reclaim your story when millions are watching.

Ryan narrates the audiobook herself, and she has taken the book on the road this fall — a Blacklash tour that has drawn hundreds, including the 400 readers who turned out at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library and the Washington, D.C. stop at Politics and Prose pictured in spirit here, where MahoganyBooks captured her surrounded by readers holding the book up like evidence. After nearly three decades of asking the questions, Ryan is finally answering one: what it costs to be seen, and what it takes to survive it.

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