Download or read book America Made Me a Black Man written by Boyah J. Farah and published by . This book was released on 2023-05-11 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A searing memoir of American racism from a Somali-American who survived hardships in his birth country only to experience firsthand the dehumanization of Black people in his adopted land, the United States. "No one told me about America." Born in Somalia and raised in a valley among nomads, Boyah Farah grew up with a code of male bravado that helped him survive deprivation, disease, and civil war. Arriving in America, he believed that the code that had saved him would help him succeed in this new country. But instead of safety and freedom, Boyah found systemic racism, police brutality, and intense prejudice in all areas of life, including the workplace. He learned firsthand not only what it meant to be an African in America, but what it means to be African American. The code of masculinity that shaped generations of men in his family could not prepare Farah for the painful realities of life in the United States. Lyrical yet unsparing, America Made Me a Black Man is the first book-length examination of American racism from an African perspective. With a singular poetic voice brimming with imagery, Boyah Farah challenges us to face difficult truths about the destructive forces that threaten Black lives. By affirming that there is a "melancholy redemption in possessing a Black body in America," he also attempts to heal a fracture in Black men's identity in this unforgettable book.
Download or read book America Made Me a Black Man written by Boyah J. Farah and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-09-06 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NAACP Image Award Nominee · NPR Best Book of 2022 A searing memoir of American racism from a Somalian-American who survived hardships in his birth country only to experience firsthand the dehumanization of Blacks in his adopted land, the United States. “No one told me about America.” Born in Somalia and raised in a valley among nomads, Boyah Farah grew up with a code of male bravado that helped him survive deprivation, disease, and civil war. Arriving in America, he believed that the code that had saved him would help him succeed in this new country. But instead of safety and freedom, Boyah found systemic racism, police brutality, and intense prejudice in all areas of life, including the workplace. He learned firsthand not only what it meant to be an African in America, but what it means to be African American. The code of masculinity that shaped generations of men in his family could not prepare Farah for the painful realities of life in the United States. Lyrical yet unsparing, America Made Me a Black Man is the first book-length examination of American racism from an African outsider’s perspective. With a singular poetic voice brimming with imagery, Boyah challenges us to face difficult truths about the destructive forces that threaten Black lives and attempts to heal a fracture in Black men’s identity.
Download or read book Makes Me Wanna Holler written by Nathan McCall and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2011-01-26 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • One of our most visceral and important memoirs on race in America, this is the story of Nathan McCall, who began life as a smart kid in a close, protective family in a black working-class neighborhood. Yet by the age of fifteen, McCall was packing a gun and embarking on a criminal career that five years later would land him in prison for armed robbery. In these pages, McCall chronicles his passage from the street to the prison yard—and, later, to the newsrooms of The Washington Post and ultimately to the faculty of Emory University. His story is at once devastating and inspiring, at once an indictment and an elegy. Makes Me Wanna Holler became an instant classic when it was first published in 1994 and it continues to bear witness to the great troubles—and the great hopes—of our nation. With a new afterword by the author
Download or read book Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man written by Emmanuel Acho and published by Flatiron Books: An Oprah Book. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An urgent primer on race and racism, from the host of the viral hit video series “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man” “You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have.” So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. “There is a fix,” Acho says. “But in order to access it, we’re going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations.” In Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white Americans are afraid to ask—yet which all Americans need the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and “reverse racism.” In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader’s curiosity—but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight.
Download or read book Black Like Me written by John Howard Griffin and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Message to the Blackman in America written by Elijah Muhammad and published by Elijah Muhammad Books.com. This book was released on 1973-11-07 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to countless mainstream news organs, Elijah Muhammad, by far, was the most powerful black man in America. Known more for the students he produced, like Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan and Muhammad Ali, this controversial man exposed the black man as well as the world to a teaching, till now, was only used behind closed doors of high degree Masons and Shriners. An easy and smart read. The book approaches the question of what and who is God. It compares the concept held by religions to nature and mathematics. It also explores the origin of the original man, mankind, devil, heaven and hell. Its title, Message To The Blackman, is directed to the American Blacks specifically, but addresses blacks universally as well.
Download or read book Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching written by Mychal Denzel Smith and published by Bold Type Books. This book was released on 2016-06-14 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller An unflinching account of what it means to be a young black man in America today, and how the existing script for black manhood is being rewritten in one of the most fascinating periods of American history. How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren't considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgent--for him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.
Download or read book Between the World and Me written by Ta-Nehisi Coates and published by One World. This book was released on 2015-07-14 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Download or read book Quitting America written by Randall Robinson and published by Plume. This book was released on 2004-12 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Debt comes a memoir that charts his journey from the most powerful nation on earth to the tiny tropical island where his wife was born. A #1 Essence bestseller.
Download or read book Everywhere You Don t Belong written by Gabriel Bump and published by Algonquin Books. This book was released on 2020-02-04 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2020 Winner of the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence “A comically dark coming-of-age story about growing up on the South Side of Chicago, but it’s also social commentary at its finest, woven seamlessly into the work . . . Bump’s meditation on belonging and not belonging, where or with whom, how love is a way home no matter where you are, is handled so beautifully that you don’t know he’s hypnotized you until he’s done.” —Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review In this alternately witty and heartbreaking debut novel, Gabriel Bump gives us an unforgettable protagonist, Claude McKay Love. Claude isn’t dangerous or brilliant—he’s an average kid coping with abandonment, violence, riots, failed love, and societal pressures as he steers his way past the signposts of youth: childhood friendships, basketball tryouts, first love, first heartbreak, picking a college, moving away from home. Claude just wants a place where he can fit. As a young black man born on the South Side of Chicago, he is raised by his civil rights–era grandmother, who tries to shape him into a principled actor for change; yet when riots consume his neighborhood, he hesitates to take sides, unwilling to let race define his life. He decides to escape Chicago for another place, to go to college, to find a new identity, to leave the pressure cooker of his hometown behind. But as he discovers, he cannot; there is no safe haven for a young black man in this time and place called America. Percolating with fierceness and originality, attuned to the ironies inherent in our twenty-first-century landscape, Everywhere You Don’t Belong marks the arrival of a brilliant young talent.
Download or read book Heavy written by Kiese Laymon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Named a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly, Buzzfeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times Critics* In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir—winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize—genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon “provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot” (Entertainment Weekly). In Heavy, Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” (The New York Times) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free. “A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel), Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. “You won’t be able to put [this memoir] down…It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities” (The Atlantic).
Download or read book The Envy of the World written by Ellis Cose and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2002-02-01 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With a compassionate eloquence reminiscent of James Baldwin's Letter to My Nephew, Ellis Cose presents a realistic examination of the challenges facing black men in modern America. Black men have never had more opportunity for success than today—yet, as bestselling author Cose puts it, "We are watching the largest group of black males in history stumbling through life with a ball and chain." Add to that the ravages of police brutality, murder, poverty, illiteracy, and the widening gap separating the black "elite" from the "underclass," and the result is a paralyzing pessimism. But even as Cose acknowledges the systemic obstacles that confront black men, he refuses to accept them as reasons for giving up; instead he rails against the destructive attitude that has made academic achievement a source of shame instead of pride in many black communities—and outlines steps black males can take to enhance their odds for success. With insightful anecdotes about a broad range of black men from all walks of life, Cose delivers a warning of the vast tragedy that is wasted black potential, and a call to arms that can enable black men to reclaim their destiny in America.
Download or read book A Particular Kind of Black Man written by Tope Folarin and published by Simon & Schuster. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times, Washington Post, Telegraph, and BBC’s most anticipated book of August 2019 One of Time’s 32 Books You Need to Read This Summer A stunning debut novel, from Rhodes Scholar and winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Tope Folarin about a Nigerian family living in Utah and their uncomfortable assimilation to American life. Living in small-town Utah has always been an uneasy fit for Tunde Akinola’s family, especially for his Nigeria-born parents. Though Tunde speaks English with a Midwestern accent, he can’t escape the children who rub his skin and ask why the black won’t come off. As he struggles to fit in and find his place in the world, he finds little solace from his parents who are grappling with their own issues. Tunde’s father, ever the optimist, works tirelessly chasing his American dream while his wife, lonely in Utah without family and friends, sinks deeper into schizophrenia. Then one otherwise-ordinary morning, Tunde’s mother wakes him with a hug, bundles him and his baby brother into the car, and takes them away from the only home they’ve ever known. But running away doesn’t bring her, or her children, any relief from the demons that plague her; once Tunde’s father tracks them down, she flees to Nigeria, and Tunde never feels at home again. He spends the rest of his childhood and young adulthood searching for connection—to the wary stepmother and stepbrothers he gains when his father remarries; to the Utah residents who mock his father’s accent; to evangelical religion; to his Texas middle school’s crowd of African-Americans; to the fraternity brothers of his historically black college. In so doing, he discovers something that sends him on a journey away from everything he has known. Sweeping, stirring, and perspective-shifting, A Particular Kind of Black Man is a beautiful and poignant exploration of the meaning of memory, manhood, home, and identity as seen through the eyes of a first-generation Nigerian-American.
Download or read book The Black Man His Antecedents His Genius And His Achievements written by William Wells Brown and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2023-10-05 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Out Of America written by Keith B Richburg and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2009-09-22 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Keith B. Richburg was an experienced and respected reporter who had paid his dues covering urban neighborhoods in Washington D.C., and won praise for his coverage of Southeast Asia. But nothing prepared him for the personal odyssey that he would embark upon when he was assigned to cover Africa. In this powerful book, Richburg takes the reader on an extraordinary journey that sweeps from Somalia to Rwanda to Zaire and finally to South Africa. He shows how he came to terms with the divide within himself: between his African racial heritage and his American cultural identity. Are these really my people? Am I truly an African-American? The answer, Richburg finds, after much soul-searching, is that no, he is not an African, but an American first and foremost. To those who romanticize Mother Africa as a black Valhalla, where blacks can walk with dignity and pride, he regrets that this is not the reality. He has been there and witnessed the killings, the repression, the false promises, and the horror. "Thank God my nameless ancestor, brought across the ocean in chains and leg irons, made it out alive," he concludes. "Thank God I am an American."
Download or read book It s Hard to Be a Black Man in America and Other African American Poems written by Elroy Alister Esdaille and published by Dorrance Publishing. This book was released on 2021-10-29 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's Hard to Be a Black Man in America and Other African American Poems By: Elroy Alister Esdaille This book examines the African-American experience from multiple perspectives and cannot be nailed down to any singular thematic presentation. By peering through the pages of time to current day, the book attempts to disclose the African-American experience in The United States, and it can be applied to other countries as well that once had former colonial designs and slave labor. Modern day America, for many Black people, can be said to be a sum total of its messy history of slavery and segregation, and the recalcitrant roots that still persist today. Life for many black men and women in America is extremely challenging for we have to negotiate systemic, and institutionalize racism on a daily basis, while simultaneously wrestling with issues of colorism and microaggressions that continue to pervade society. It’s difficult to understand the perspective of a black man or black woman in America without getting at least a glimpse into his or her insight about race relations and its impact on him or her. Many African Americans feel that the system is designed against them, but their racial concerns often fall on deaf ears. This book gives in-depth examinations about race in America and it asks questions about accountability through the stylist forms of the poems. As a Caribbean immigrant who migrated to The United States, Elroy Alister Esdaille’s experiences as a black man with race relations has at times been painful as he has experienced firsthand the ugliness of racism and how the system so often makes it extremely hard for many black men to strive and live with dignity and pride. He has watched how the stereotype of criminality has informed decisions made against black men like him, and how one must develop a will stronger than iron in order to survive. As he envisions his readers, it is his desire to speak to all truth seekers and world changers. Race is a messy topic that many people avoid, but it is his aim to confront the issues head-on and lay the foundation for honest and controversial conversations that could inspire meaningful change in society. He would not say he is attempting to enlighten anyone, but rather for people to find their true selves and push hard for the future that they want and deserve.
Download or read book Citizen written by Claudia Rankine and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2014-10-07 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: * Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry * * Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism * Winner of the NAACP Image Award * Winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize * Winner of the PEN Open Book Award * ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, NPR. Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Slate, Time Out New York, Vulture, Refinery 29, and many more . . . A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.
