This is a famous book, a book that made the NYT best seller’s
list. It is a book that I am supposed to like because reading it should show
the world that I am racially sensitive and I am a good little liberal. Having
read this book has become a badge of honor for all left leaning intellectuals
in the United States.
When you have expectations like that, you tend to approach
the book with a jaundiced eye. You feel a bit defensive about liking the book.
You feel like you are obligated to read this book because it adds to your
credentials.
Fact is, I loved this book. For many reasons and at
different levels and the book touched me in different ways.
On a very basic level, I love the flow of the book; it is
actually an extended essay, stretching over 152 pages. It is no wonder that the
author is such a celebrated writer. The man can write. More importantly, he has
a very blunt voice, one that is backed up with writing skills and an ability to
think critically and an original thought process and a unique point of view.
This serves to make his voice salient and outstanding.
The essay is a letter to his teenage son. It is at once a
personal essay, an oral history of his own experience as a black young man in a
white America. It is a warning and a detailed instruction book about how
America expects its black young men to react and how these expectations will
act on the mind of the black young men in America. But to call it as just a
warning is also to de-mean its importance to our society.
This is the author’s extended conversation with all of us, his
black compatriots; the white society which has shaped his life, intellect, and
emotions; and not the least of which, his son. He goes into a long discourse on
what it is to be a black man in America. He accomplishes his goal by putting
his own experience out there for all to examine, he exposes his deepest
feelings and thoughts to the readers, an act of true courage. He make his
points, he defends his points, he weaves a story of the hard earned knowledge
he learned at his father’s feet, as well as on the streets of Baltimore. He
lays out the lessons he learned while growing up as a young black man, going
from child to a grown man with a family and working as a journalist.
The narrative is raw, personal, and hard to hear. I have had
to stop reading at certain points of the narrative because it is too
emotionally draining and intellectually challenging. I have had to stop and
think about what is said. When I mentioned this to a friend, she, a black
woman, said:” I have internalized it.”, i.e. the emotional upheavals and
feelings dredged up by the author are part and parcel the American experience
for my friend. And that revelation is yet another point of pause for me.
As I approached the end of the narrative, I was both happy
that the emotional roller coaster was coming to an end, but at the same time I
was sad to have to cease reading the words of a craftsman and a thoughtful,
deeply intelligent philosopher.
This book takes a lot of thought and reflection. This is a
serious and important history of the American experience, it elicits ideas and
reflections that aren’t usually on the surface, and that is a good thing.
I believe this book is as important as the mass media
reports, It is in fact, much more important.
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