Black Is the Body
Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine
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4.0 • 20 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher 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 the body of this book.”
In these twelve deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up black in the south with a family name inherited from a white man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop, marrying a white man from the North and bringing him home to her family, adopting two children from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily white New England college town. Each of these essays sets out to discover a new way of talking about race and of telling the truth as the author has lived it.
"Black Is the Body is one of the most beautiful, elegant memoirs I've ever read. It's about race, it's about womanhood, it's about friendship, it's about a life of the mind, and also a life of the body. But more than anything, it's about love. I can't praise Emily Bernard enough for what she has created in these pages." --Elizabeth Gilbert
WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PROSE
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND KIRKUS REVIEWS
ONE OF MAUREEN CORRIGAN'S 10 UNPUTDOWNABLE READS OF THE YEAR
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bernard, a University of Vermont professor of English and race and ethnic studies, intimately explores her life through the lens of race in this contemplative and compassionate collection of personal essays. As a Yale graduate student, Bernard was the victim of a mass stabbing, an event at the center of the book's opening essay, "Beginnings," and her premise that writing about and remembering a traumatic past is a process "fundamental in black American experience." She aims to "contribute something to the American racial drama besides the enduring narrative of black innocence and white guilt," in essays that include "Teaching the N-Word" and "Motherland," about adopting and raising two girls from Ethiopia with her white husband. Bernard's voice throughout is personable yet incisive in exploring the lived reality of race. By examining her family's Southern roots and her present life in Vermont, in "Interstates," she explores the differences and the bridge between white and black in her life. In "Black Is the Body," a beautiful reflection on racial difference and disparities, she acknowledges how race has informed "everything I do, and everything I write." Bernard's wisdom and compassion radiate throughout this thoughtful collection.
Customer Reviews
One of the finest collections of essays I have ever read.
Phrases that seem cliched like I laughed, I cried are honestly true of a reading of this book. Emily Bernard invites us into her life, the joys, the tragedies, and in the process engages the reader in a very necessary examination of race relations in America.