Literature
Being a Black Man
By Sidik Fofana—SeeingBlack.com Contributing Writer
Mar 13, 2008, 12:25

Sometimes stating the overly familiar in a simple phrase reveals unexplored nuances and insights. Such is the case with Being a Black Man, an anthology of writings on Black manhood edited by the staff of The Washington Post.,

With a personal introduction by novelist Edward P. Jones, a Washington D.C. native, Being a Black Mancovers the social and political epidemics that plague African-Americans, such as failing school and health care systems, crime, and unemployment. The book features pieces from a range of Black men, including Washington Wizards' guard Gilbert Arenas and Colin Powell, who try to make sense of a race vitiated by statistics without stories.

Though the topic of black manhood in the United States has already been thoroughly dissected, Being a Black Man provides productive analysis by documenting the personal side of this phenomenon, and by putting faces to the problems and author’s signatures to the solutions.

Chris Darnsby, 25, has a high school diploma, but finds it difficult to hold down a job. He's been a guard and a truck driver but he did not find fulfillment in either job. Journalist David Finkel writes of Darnsby and others: "The unemployed Black male: He has been studied and commented on more than any other category of American worker, always to conflicting conclusions....The problems, these academics say, is behavioral. Others, however, say it's structural."

But the articles do not just harp on the deficiencies and injustices in the Black community. Eugene Robinson's" Not Just Any Walk-On Part" is about Barack Obama's career and his uncredited "Blackness." "For The Love of Ballou" focuses on two young high school students who turn adversity at a Washington D.C. school into a first-rate story of redemptive success. Both address hindering trends in the Black community while offering promise for change.

Being A Black Man is a reliable set of documents from wise pens. It feels different than anthologies that all but glorify the subordination of Black Americans. The book also has useful appendices of pertinent statistics and surveys compiled in the last thirty years. Being A Black Man outlines the major issues that Black men face today and, more importantly, the strides made toward addressing them.


Read and search hundreds of reviews on SeeingBlack.com's Literature channel and archive.

Click here to post a comment or your own review of To Be a Black Man or here to go to "The Write News" blog on the publishing industry, by Anita Diggs.

Do you shop at Amazon? Well shop through our link and support SeeingBlack.com! You get the same low Amazon prices and support SeeingBlack.com at the same time!



© Copyright by SeeingBlack.com