Black Is the Body

By Emily Bernard,

Book cover of Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine

Book description

“Blackness is an art, not a science. It is a paradox: intangible and visceral; a situation and a story. It is the thread that connects these essays, but its significance as an experience emerges randomly, unpredictably. . . . Race is the story of my life, and therefore black is…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Black Is the Body as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Faithful to its title, this brilliant book starts with the body — an unspeakable injury to the narrator’s body, a crime, a horror. Bernard writes with a specificity that is gut-wrenching without being sensational. And all along, running alongside the sensory language is the author’s intellectual river, constantly washing over and over a moment, a scene, a feeling, a thought. This book includes twelve interconnected essays, each building on the other despite how many years – and miles – separate them.

From Cassandra's list on lyrical memoirs from the soul.

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