This is a story of my journey...

...in search of who I am becoming, told through memories and reflections of my inner and outward experiences. Much of the theme are reflections on my personal experiences with racial prejudices and challenges throughout my youth and adult life and how those experiences helped to shape the individual I became. As a poet who discovered his obligation to write and teach late in life and who has been a witness to the human experience and a seeker of self-knowledge, I chronicle a journey of seeking the meaning and purpose of my life in the context of racial barriers and life challenges. Spoken through poems, essays, and personal narrative I, Too, Am Tar Baby offers an archetypal model of the journey of self-discovery for Black youth and young adults. The memoir teaches all Americans that the work of creating a more just society is as much a moral responsibility for those who deny history as it is for those who have been impacted by racial inequality and injustice.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

John Warner Smith was the Poet Laureate of Louisiana from 2019 to 2021 and is the only African American male to serve in the office in its 83-year history. Smith has published five collections of poetry, most recently Our Shut Eyes (MadHat Press, 2021). His sixth collection, From the Flinty Rock: New & Selected Poems, is forthcoming from MadHat Press in late 2025.

Smith’s novella, For All Those Men: When the KKK Threatened to Take Control of Louisiana, was published by UL Press in November 2022. His first full-length novel, Sisters of Gavinville, was published in December 2024 by Between the Lines (BTL) Publishing. Smith’s second novella, Murders on Red Hill: The Tragedy at Mer Rouge, will be published by BTL in 2026.

A Cave Canem Fellow, Smith is a 2020 Poet Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets and is winner of the 2019 Linda Hodge Bromberg Literary Award. He earned his MFA at the University of New Orleans.

Smith is retired from full-time work and is an Adjunct Instructor of English at Southern University in Baton Rouge.