Losing My Cool
Love, Literature, and a Black Man's Escape from the Crowd
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4.4 • 44 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A pitch-perfect account of how hip-hop culture drew in the author and how his father drew him out again-with love, perseverance, and fifteen thousand books.
Into Williams's childhood home-a one-story ranch house-his father crammed more books than the local library could hold. "Pappy" used some of these volumes to run an academic prep service; the rest he used in his unending pursuit of wisdom. His son's pursuits were quite different-"money, hoes, and clothes." The teenage Williams wore Medusa- faced Versace sunglasses and a hefty gold medallion, dumbed down and thugged up his speech, and did whatever else he could to fit into the intoxicating hip-hop culture that surrounded him. Like all his friends, he knew exactly where he was the day Biggie Smalls died, he could recite the lyrics to any Nas or Tupac song, and he kept his woman in line, with force if necessary.
But Pappy, who grew up in the segregated South and hid in closets so he could read Aesop and Plato, had a different destiny in mind for his son. For years, Williams managed to juggle two disparate lifestyles- "keeping it real" in his friends' eyes and studying for the SATs under his father's strict tutelage. As college approached and the stakes of the thug lifestyle escalated, the revolving door between Williams's street life and home life threatened to spin out of control. Ultimately, Williams would have to decide between hip-hop and his future. Would he choose "street dreams" or a radically different dream- the one Martin Luther King spoke of or the one Pappy held out to him now?
Williams is the first of his generation to measure the seductive power of hip-hop against its restrictive worldview, which ultimately leaves those who live it powerless. Losing My Cool portrays the allure and the danger of hip-hop culture like no book has before. Even more remarkably, Williams evokes the subtle salvation that literature offers and recounts with breathtaking clarity a burgeoning bond between father and son.
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Customer Reviews
Great book for those who dealt with peer presure
Very interesting book about the author who is mixed (black and white) and is dealing with identifying himself by choosing a trend vs his own likes and goals. I’m Mexican-American but can definitely relate!
Amazing!
Losing My Cool is the book every young man should read, especially young black men. I hope Mr. Williams continues to wrote other great books.
Losing My Cool
Heard an interview with Thomas on the Dennis Prager show and was immediately intrigued by the book and subsequently purchased it. The book is well written and edited. The story is not of your typical young black man who is academic and awkward amongst his peers. It is the story of a young black man who is academic and fully immersed and assimilated in his neighborhood and culture. The detail and thought that goes into his examination of pretense and putting on a "front" that dominates his culture and that of the hip-hop culture is captivating and very introspective. I could not wait to continue on his journey with him and was delighted by his application of philosophy in examining the group think that impacts all cultures. His analysis of the freedom that exists for all of us, of any race or group, to explore places, people, music, culture, books...beyond our immediate surroundings is a call to action for everyone to explore and push beyond their comfort. I strongly recommend this book and will encourage my friends with teen or preteen kids of any type to share it with them.