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How to make a slave and other essays / Jerald Walker.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: 21st century essaysPublisher: Columbus : Mad Creek Books, an imprint of The Ohio State University Press, [2020]Copyright date: ©2020Description: viii, 151 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780814255995
  • 081425599X
Uniform titles:
  • Essays. Selections
Subject(s): Genre/Form:
Contents:
How to make a slave -- Dragon slayers -- Before grief -- Inauguration -- Kaleshion -- The heritage room -- Unprepared -- Feeding pigeons -- Breathe -- The heart -- Balling -- Testimony -- Smoke -- Wars -- Simple -- The designated driver -- Strippers -- Thieves -- Once more to the ghetto -- Race stories -- Advice to a family man.
Summary: "Personal essays exploring identity, family, and community through the prism of race and black culture. Confronts the medical profession's racial biases, shopping while black at Whole Foods, the legacy of Michael Jackson, raising black boys, haircuts that scare white people, racial profiling, and growing up in Southside Chicago"-- Provided by publisher.
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library NonFiction 305.896 W181 Available 33111010420236
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Finalist, National Book Award in Nonfiction

Winner, Massachusetts Book Award

A Book of the Year pick from Kirkus, BuzzFeed, and Literary Hub



"The essays in this collection are restless, brilliant and short....The brevity suits not just Walker's style but his worldview, too....Keeping things quick gives him the freedom to move; he can alight on a truth without pinning it into place." --Jennifer Szalai, the New York Times



For the black community, Jerald Walker asserts in How to Make a Slave, "anger is often a prelude to a joke, as there is broad understanding that the triumph over this destructive emotion lay in finding its punchline." It is on the knife's edge between fury and farce that the essays in this exquisite collection balance. Whether confronting the medical profession's racial biases, considering the complicated legacy of Michael Jackson, paying homage to his writing mentor James Alan McPherson, or attempting to break free of personal and societal stereotypes, Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique. The result is a bracing and often humorous examination by one of America's most acclaimed essayists of what it is to grow, parent, write, and exist as a black American male. Walker refuses to lull his readers; instead his missives urge them to do better as they consider, through his eyes, how to be a good citizen, how to be a good father, how to live, and how to love.

How to make a slave -- Dragon slayers -- Before grief -- Inauguration -- Kaleshion -- The heritage room -- Unprepared -- Feeding pigeons -- Breathe -- The heart -- Balling -- Testimony -- Smoke -- Wars -- Simple -- The designated driver -- Strippers -- Thieves -- Once more to the ghetto -- Race stories -- Advice to a family man.

"Personal essays exploring identity, family, and community through the prism of race and black culture. Confronts the medical profession's racial biases, shopping while black at Whole Foods, the legacy of Michael Jackson, raising black boys, haircuts that scare white people, racial profiling, and growing up in Southside Chicago"-- Provided by publisher.

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