What doesn't kill you makes you blacker : a memoir in essays
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Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at LARL/NWRL Consortium.
- 1 of 1 copy available at Lake Agassiz Regional Library. (Show preferred library)
Current holds
0 current holds with 1 total copy.
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Detroit Lakes Public Library | 921 YOU (Text) | 33500013045208 | Main | Available | - |
Record details
- ISBN: 0062684302
- ISBN: 9780062684301
-
Physical Description:
307 pages ; 24 cm
print - Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York, NY : Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, [2019]
- Copyright: ©2019
Content descriptions
| Formatted Contents Note: | Introduction: Living while black is an extreme sport -- Nigger fight story -- Street cred -- Bomb-ass poetry -- Your turn -- No homo -- Driver's ed -- Three niggas -- Obama bomaye -- Broke -- How to make the internet hate you in 15 simple steps -- Banging over bacon -- Yolo -- Living while black killed my mom -- East liberty kutz -- Thursday-night hoops -- Zoe. |
| Summary, etc.: | For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as "How should I react here, as a professional black person?" and "Will this white person's potato salad kill me?" are forever relevant. What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young's efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him. It's a condition that's sometimes stretched to absurd limits, provoking the angst that made him question if he was any good at the "being straight" thing, as if his sexual orientation was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble move or knitting; creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; and generating the surreality of watching gentrification transform his Pittsburgh neighborhood from predominantly Black to "Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies." And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white. From one of our most respected cultural observers, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity. |
Reviews
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2019 February #1
*Starred Review* Columnist, blogger, and editor-in-chief of VerySmartBrothas, Young delivers a passionate, wryly bittersweet tribute to Black life in majority-white Pittsburgh. Raised by devoted working-class parents who, despite education, talent, and hard work, endure chronic homelessness and "ferocious joblessness occasionally interrupted by microbursts of underemployment," Young bounces between suburban and urban schools, constantly reassessing his self-worth and his Blackness. His barbed riffs on gentrification, Black barber shops ("one of the few places where Black men with papers and without college degrees could find honest employment"), basketball, appropriate use of the word "nigga," and the obtuseness of white privilege are sharply observed. Young articulates the mingled bemusement, rage, and terror of living in a "relatively safe and superficially Black space . . . enveloped by whiteness." On the political front, he writes, "For the first 2 hours following the election of Barack Obama, I knew how it felt to be a white American . . . I was reminded of the danger of entertaining that delusion when my black-ass president appeared on the screen and the only thought I could muster was, âPlease don't let those motherfuckers kill him.'" A must read. Copyright 2019 Booklist Reviews.
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| Genre: | Biography. Biographies. Autobiographies. Essays. |
