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    Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education
    Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education
    Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education
    Audiobook5 hours

    Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education

    Written by Mychal Denzel Smith

    Narrated by Kevin R. Free

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren't considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgent-for him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateJun 14, 2016
    ISBN9781501926099
    Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education

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    Reviews for Invisible Man Got the Whole World Watching

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    • 2/5
      The author has a professional, lucid writing style. I believe he would make a very good news reporter. However, this is not reporting. It's really a lengthy personal blog piece by a black millennial (emphasis on the millennial and not the black, despite what even he may think) reflecting on his growing up and becoming a man. He shows a heavy interest in and powerful influence from popular culture, giving great authority to celebrities, at least the ones he likes. He seems to be unaware of how often he points out a so-called popular "truth" about our society, admitting its validity and then says something disqualifying the same point, seemingly for no other reason then he found a rationale why it could be viewed as wrong, thus negating anything that said otherwise. By merely giving more weight to one point, in his mind, he simply discounts the other points without much further analysis. I'll admit I was expecting something much closer to Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, perhaps with a less intense temperament. Certainly, the style, and arguably his approach, is different, but, unlike the Coates work which I felt as much as read, this book struck me as merely a generally smart young man struggling with his world, with much of that struggle due to his own lack of experience, plus an unwillingness to look beyond his pop cultural heroes for insight. Frankly, I don't see why his musings are getting so much more attention than a host of other younger adults, black or otherwise.
    • 4/5
      Smith's writing is sometimes disorganized and very occasionally his thoughts don't seem fully formed, but overall this is excellent. His writing is searching and authentic. He never minces words or hesitates to share his own fears, mistakes, and challenges. The chapters on intersectionality of race issues with issues of gender or sexual orientation are really stellar. Smith weaves his personal narrative with political consciousness in a way that works really well, and I'm looking forward to seeing what's next for him.
    • 5/5
      I am embarrassingly late to the table on race issues, and this was one of the books I started with. I found it eye opening and challenging - a helpful entry into this fraught issue.
    • 5/5
      "We make a grave mistake every time we invoke the history of oppression to diminish the reality of racism's present. Progress is real, but the narrative of progress seduces us into inaction. If we believe, simply, that it gets better, there is no incentive to do the work to ensure that it does."