A compelling, profoundly unsettling blend of memoir and manifesto that proposes that--by design--matters will never improve for African Americans.... Blending affecting memoir that touches on such matters as mental illness, alienation, exile, and a transcendent maternal love with brittle condemnation of a condition of unfreedom and relentless othering, the author delivers a difficult but necessary argument. Perhaps the greatest value of the book is in its posing of questions that may seem rhetorical but in fact probe at interethnic conflicts that are hundreds, even thousands of years old.... An essential contribution to any discussion of race and likely to be a standard text in cultural studies for years to come.--Kirkus Reviews [starred review]

Frank B. Wilderson III both thinks and feels, and profoundly knows the difference. I am not sure that I agree with what he thinks, because frankly, how would I know? But I hope that he is wrong, even though I know that no thinking is wishful. Read this book.--Fran Lebowitz

[Wilderson's] writing is powerful, nuanced, and lyrical ("Her hair was white and thin as dandelion puffs," he recalls of a visit to his aged mother.)... [his] passionate account of racism's malevolent influence is engrossing.

Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation

Pub date: 2021-09-28

Length: 368 pages