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How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 4 hrs and 16 mins
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How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
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Publisher's summary
Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in Nonfiction
“The essays in this collection are restless, brilliant and short.... The brevity suits not just Walker’s style but his worldview, too.... Keeping things quick gives him the freedom to move; he can alight on a truth without pinning it into place.” (Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times)
For the Black community, Jerald Walker asserts in How to Make a Slave, “anger is often a prelude to a joke, as there is broad understanding that the triumph over this destructive emotion lay in finding its punchline.” It is on the knife’s edge between fury and farce that the essays in this exquisite collection balance. Whether confronting the medical profession’s racial biases, considering the complicated legacy of Michael Jackson, paying homage to his writing mentor James Alan McPherson, or attempting to break free of personal and societal stereotypes, Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique. The result is a bracing and often humorous examination by one of America’s most acclaimed essayists of what it is to grow, parent, write, and exist as a Black American male. Walker refuses to lull his listeners; instead his missives urge them to do better as they consider, through his eyes, how to be a good citizen, how to be a good father, how to live, and how to love.
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 206
Twelve-year old Sheldon Horowitz is still recovering from the tragic loss of his mother only a year ago when a suspicious traffic accident steals the life of his father near their home in rural Massachusetts. It is 1938, and Sheldon, who was in the truck, emerges from the crash an orphan hell-bent on revenge. He takes that fire with him to Hartford, where he embarks on a new life under the roof of his buttoned-up Uncle Nate.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Absolutely wonderful story.
- By George Thomas on 12-11-21
By: Derek B. Miller
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Millard Salter's Last Day
- By: Jacob M. Appel
- Narrated by: Joe Barrett
- Length: 7 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 63
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 59
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 59
In an effort to delay the frailty and isolation that comes with old age, psychiatrist Millard Salter decides to kill himself by the end of the day - but first he has to tie up some loose ends. These include a tête-à-tête with his youngest son, Lysander, who at 43 has yet to hold down a paying job; an unscheduled rendezvous with his first wife, Carol, whom he hasn't seen in 27 years; and a brief visit to the grave of his second wife, Isabelle. Complicating this plan, though, is Delilah, the widow with whom he has fallen in love in the past few months.
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5 out of 5 stars
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great storytelling....
- By Anna Marie Bair on 01-18-20
By: Jacob M. Appel
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When a Stranger Comes to Town
- By: Michael Koryta
- Narrated by: Cindy Kay, Janina Edwards, Fajer Al-Kaisi, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 56
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 53
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Story4 out of 5 stars 53
It's been said that all great literature boils down to one of two stories—a man takes a journey, or a stranger comes to town. While mystery writers have been successfully using both approaches for generations, there's something undeniably alluring in the nature of a stranger: the uninvited guest, the unacquainted neighbor, the fish out of water. In the newest collection of stories by the Mystery Writers of America, each author weaves a fresh tale surrounding the eerie feeling that comes when a stranger enters our midst, featuring stories by prolific mystery writers.
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5 out of 5 stars
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The narrators are outstanding here.
- By Jennifer Baratta She/Her on 05-16-21
By: Michael Koryta
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My Life as a Rat
- A Novel
- By: Joyce Carol Oates
- Narrated by: Sadie Alexandru
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 153
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 133
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Story4 out of 5 stars 133
My Life as a Rat follows Violet Rue Kerrigan, a young woman who looks back upon her life in exile from her family following her testimony, at age 12, concerning what she knew to be the racist murder of an African American boy by her older brothers. In a succession of vividly recalled episodes, Violet contemplates the circumstances of her life as the initially beloved youngest child of seven Kerrigan children who inadvertently “informs” on her brothers, setting into motion their arrests and convictions and her own long estrangement.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Heavy Topics & Satisfying Story
- By Oscar on 06-30-19
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Members Only
- By: Sameer Pandya
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra
- Length: 10 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 31
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 27
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 26
Raj Bhatt is often unsure of where he belongs. Having moved to America from Bombay as a child, he knew few Indian kids. Now middle-aged, he lives mostly happily in California with a job at a university. Still, his white wife seems to fit in better than he does at times, especially at their tennis club, a place he's cautiously come to love. But it's there that, in one week, his life unravels. It begins at a meeting for potential new members: Raj thrills to find an African American couple on the list; he dreams of a more diverse club. But in an effort to connect, he makes a racist joke.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Stick with it... so worth it!
- By Andrea R Martinez on 09-02-20
By: Sameer Pandya
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Dreams from My Father
- A Story of Race and Inheritance
- By: Barack Obama
- Narrated by: Barack Obama
- Length: 14 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall5 out of 5 stars 565
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 488
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Story5 out of 5 stars 484
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a Black African father and a White American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a Black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father - a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man - has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey - first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Powerful
- By Gene R. on 10-26-21
By: Barack Obama
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A Hard Ticket Home
- By: David Housewright
- Narrated by: Brent Hinkle
- Length: 7 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 55
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 48
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Story4 out of 5 stars 47
Ex-St. Paul cop Rushmore McKenzie has more time, and more money, than he knows what to do with. In fact, when he’s willing to admit it to himself (and he usually isn’t), Mac is downright bored. Until he decides to do a favor for a friend facing a family tragedy: Nine-year-old Stacy Carlson has been diagnosed with leukemia, and the only one with the matching bone marrow that can save her is her older sister, Jamie. Trouble is, Jamie ran away from home years ago.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Finally on Audible...
- By shelley on 03-14-20
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Scars and Stilettos - 2nd Edition
- By: Harmony Dust
- Narrated by: Harmony Dust
- Length: 7 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 81
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 72
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 73
Scars and Stilettos: At 13, after being abandoned by her mother one summer and left to take care of her younger brother, Harmony becomes susceptible to a relationship that turns out to be toxic, abusive, and ultimately exploitative. She eventually finds herself working in a strip club at the age of 19, and her boyfriend becomes her pimp, controlling her every move and taking all of her money. Ultimately, she discovers a path to freedom and a whole new life.
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3 out of 5 stars
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A religious book
- By Amazonbuyer on 10-12-21
By: Harmony Dust
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The Company You Keep
- By: Neil Gordon
- Narrated by: Donald Corren, Hillary Huber, Kirby Heyborne, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 48
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 36
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Story4 out of 5 stars 36
Set against the rise and fall of the radical antiwar group the Weather Underground, The Company You Keep is a sweeping American saga about sacrifice, the ecstatic righteousness of youth, and the tension between political ideals and family loyalties. When Jason Sinai, one of the last Vietnam-era fugitives still wanted on murder charges for a robbery gone wrong in 1974, encounters a young newspaper reporter in search of a story, he must abandon years of safe underground life for the dangerous life of the road.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Audiobook of the Year
- By connie on 05-13-12
By: Neil Gordon
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Beer Money
- A Memoir of Privilege and Loss
- By: Frances Stroh
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 212
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 191
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Story4 out of 5 stars 190
Frances Stroh's earliest memories are ones of great privilege: shopping trips to London and New York, lunches served by black-tied waiters at the Regency Hotel, and a house filled with precious antiques, which she was forbidden to touch. Established in Detroit in 1850, by 1984 the Stroh Brewing Company had become the largest private beer fortune in America and a brand emblematic of the American dream itself; while Stroh was coming of age, the Stroh family fortune was estimated to be worth $700 million.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Beer boring
- By Richard E. Putt Jr. on 05-22-16
By: Frances Stroh
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 176
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 146
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Story4 out of 5 stars 146
Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Great book, wonderful reader
- By Lisbeth on 11-22-11
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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Lay Your Sleeping Head
- The Henry Rios Mysteries, Book 1
- By: Michael Nava
- Narrated by: Thom Rivera
- Length: 7 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 105
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 90
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 90
A completely revised edition of the first Henry Rios mystery, The Little Death, Lay Your Sleeping Head introduces Michael Nava’s singular protagonist, gay Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios. Rios, beset by personal and professional problems, begins a passionate affair with the black sheep heir to a great California fortune who tells Rios an improbable tale of murder and sexual predation in his wealthy family. When the young man is found dead of an apparent drug overdose, Rios begins an investigation that ultimately reveals much more than murder.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Loved It
- By Leah Brock on 06-20-20
By: Michael Nava
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The Turner House
- By: Angela Flournoy
- Narrated by: Adenrele Ojo
- Length: 12 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 665
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 595
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Story4 out of 5 stars 597
The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over 50 years. Their house has seen 13 children grown and gone - and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a 10th of its mortgage.
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3 out of 5 stars
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The narrator's performance made the difference.
- By KT on 06-11-15
By: Angela Flournoy
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The Song and the Silence
- A Story About Family, Race, and What Was Revealed in a Small Town in the Mississippi Delta While Searching for Booker Wright
- By: Yvette Johnson
- Narrated by: Robin Miles
- Length: 9 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 209
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Performance5 out of 5 stars 189
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 188
"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Exceeded every expectation
- By ZeeJ84 on 05-23-21
By: Yvette Johnson
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Since We Fell
- A Novel
- By: Dennis Lehane
- Narrated by: Julia Whelan
- Length: 12 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,195
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 2,014
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Story4 out of 5 stars 2,006
Since We Fell follows Rachel Childs, a former journalist who, after an on-air mental breakdown, now lives as a virtual shut-in. In all other respects, however, she enjoys an ideal life with an ideal husband. Until a chance encounter on a rainy afternoon causes that ideal life to fray. As does Rachel's marriage. As does Rachel herself. Sucked into a conspiracy thick with deception, violence, and possibly madness, Rachel must find the strength within herself to conquer unimaginable fears and mind-altering truths.
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2 out of 5 stars
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Wait ....
- By Ann on 05-17-17
By: Dennis Lehane
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Privileged Information
- Alan Gregory, Book 1
- By: Stephen White
- Narrated by: Dick Hill
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 198
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 180
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Story4 out of 5 stars 180
Alan Gregory is a clinical psychologist with a thriving practice in Boulder, Colorado. His life begins to unravel when one of his female patients is found in an apparent suicide and the local paper begins printing accusations from an unnamed source of sexual impropriety between the woman and Dr. Gregory. He launches a psychological and personal quest for the truth that rapidly intensifies when more of his patients die untimely deaths, and Gregory suspects not only that the deaths are related but that another one of his patients may be somehow involved. Lacking facts but roused by suspicion and troubled by seemingly random acts of terror around him, Gregory starts to fear for the safety of the people he loves. The question of the inviolability of confidential disclosures made to Gregory by his patients - privileged information - becomes crucial as the psychologist pursues an unsettling romance with Lauren Crowder, a lovely deputy district attorney investigating one of the deaths. Bound to silence, Gregory follows the psychological tracks of someone he fears may be a cunning and disturbed killer, while turning to his enigmatic but supportive partner, Diane Estevez, for counsel, and to his tart-tongued female urologist neighbor for support. The sinister, surprising drama unfolds against Boulder's Rocky Mountain backdrop, in the arresting natural beauty of Aspen, and in the midst of a baroque Halloween costume party in downtown Boulder. Finally, in a lonely mountain lodge enshrouded in menace, the story comes to its breathtaking climax.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Four and a half stars, actually....
- By karen on 10-11-13
By: Stephen White
What listeners say about How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 04-15-21
Honest and Personal
How to Make a Slave and Other Essays has a lot to say about race, but more to say about just being a person. Walker does not preoccupy himself with trying to make a point or teach a lesson, despite being a professor. Rather, he focuses on being honest about his thoughts and experiences. When dealing with topics like race, it is common for it to become an issue of groups and not individuals. Walker brings in his individuality, his family, his flaws, his achievements.Early in the book, he explains how his mentor urged him away from stereotypes and towards writing about what’s “real”, and what’s real is Walker himself. He deals with very serious subjects, but there is also room in the collection for a healthy amount of humor and levity. Walker is self-aware and unafraid to laugh at himself and the ridiculousness of some of the situations in which he has found himself. When the essays get more serious, Walker maintains the focus on what is real. The issues he deals with are complicated, and he expresses an appropriate and realistic amount of inner conflict and contradictions. He does not pretend to have always had race, fatherhood, or academia figured out, and that helps the reader to feel comfortable reflecting on and processing their own ideas on difficult subjects rather than feel they are being told what to think. How to Make a Slave and Other Essays is a quick, satisfying, and thought-provoking read that I would gladly recommend.
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