Ripon Public Library

What doesn't kill you makes you blacker, a memoir in essays, Damon Young

eng

autobiography

no index present

non fiction

What doesn't kill you makes you blacker

1090242570

Damon Young

a memoir in essays

For 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 person's potato salad kill me?" are forever relevant. What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young's efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him. It's a condition that's 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 Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker is 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 masculinityPossessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst. Young chronicles his efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him. At their most devastating, these essays provide him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white. The result is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of both white supremacy and how we define masculinity. -- adapted from jacket

Introduction: Living while black is an extreme sport -- Nigger fight story -- Street cred -- Bomb-ass poetry -- Your turn -- No homo -- Driver's ed -- Three niggas -- Obama bomaye -- Broke -- How to make the internet hate you in 15 simple steps -- Banging over bacon -- Yolo -- Living while black killed my mom -- East liberty kutz -- Thursday-night hoops -- Zoe

What does not kill you makes you blacker