A Finalist for the NAACP Image AwardA Finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for NonfictionLonglisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the EssayAn NPR Best Book of the YearA Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite of the YearFrom the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the mostreadwriters on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in AmericaFor 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 persons potato salad kill me? are forever relevant. What Doesnt Kill You Makes You Blackerchronicles Youngs efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him. Its a condition thats 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 Doesnt Kill You Makes You Blackeris 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.
