Black Skin, White Masks

By: Frantz Fanon, Richard Philcox - translator

Narrated by: Terrence Kidd

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks represents some of his most important work. Fanon's masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of listeners.

A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.

©1952 Éditions du Seuil; English translation copyright 2008 by Richard Philcox; Foreword copyright 2008 by Kwame Anthony Appiah (P)2022 Tantor

I learned a lot thank you!

I learned a lot, thank you. I will def have to let the content sink in and listen again!

Best Book to begin to understand Race Relations

I have not before managed to put my thoughts together to try and begin to understand race relations. it has always been something that I wanted to get to understand and this book is a very good starting point. It is intelligently supported with scholarly works and Fannon was really passionate about exploring this subject. Good read.

brilliant book not well narrated

This book's brilliant prose, exhaustive scholarship, and psychoanalyst's POV gave me tools to think more clearly about the colonial, post-slavery experience of black people.

A notable epiphany came in his discussion of Jung and Adler and the idea that psychoanalytical "universals" are actually ethnic = culturaly specific

The narrator didn't seem to understand a lot of what he was reading, and he mangled the foreign language words, which made the already complex prose harder to understand and was often just tiresome.

Awaking Psychoanalysis of Colonization

Fanon does an excellent psychoanalysis of colonialism and racism in the unconscious as a result of societal systems. It is relevant to this day and age and truly awakens underlying content in the psyche. It is deep and rich in meaning.

An amazing work still relevant 70 years later

Well, this book is sometimes difficult to understand because of the jargon analysis, it’s an interesting work at the world from the eyes of a black man in the early 1900s. Fannon’s message of solidarity of a human race is inspiring.

Excellent piece of work

First heard of Fanon while doing a Master's in History. I'm glad I picked up this book. Though written decades ago, the lessons are still 100% relevant today. Written and narrated in a way that's easy to understand and relate to, it is a masterclass presentation on how sometimes we as Africans and descendants all over the world are often are our own worst enemies. Highly recommended.

Not my book

It’s really isn’t my type of read, I felt like this read was all over the place and I just couldn’t get myself to like the book.

So disappointing…

I’ve looked forward to reading Frantz Fanon for many years, so when his work became available on Audible, I was really excited. Sadly, this book was difficult to get through and overall quite disappointing. There are a lot of made up words (for example, phobogenic, inferiorized, etc). I’m Fanon’s defense, I believe the book was originally written in French and translated into English so it’s possible that the book reads more naturally in French. Nevertheless, I feel like Fanon’s ideas are hard to follow and he frames his arguments in a more convoluted way than necessary (almost like he’s rambling or stream-of-consciousness writing). On the whole, his arguments seem very superficial and repetitive.