I Take My Coffee Black

Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith, and Being Black in America

By: Tyler Merritt, Jimmy Kimmel - foreword

Narrated by: Jimmy Kimmel, Tyler Merritt, James Iglehart, Jerrie Elaine Merritt, Milton Merrit

As a six-foot, two-inch, dreadlocked Black man, Tyler Merritt knows what it feels like to be stereotyped as threatening, which can have dangerous consequences. But he also knows that proximity to people who are different from ourselves can be a cure for racism.

Tyler Merritt's video "Before You Call the Cops" has been viewed millions of times. He's appeared on Jimmy Kimmel and Sports Illustrated and has been profiled in the New York Times. The viral video's main point - the more you know someone, the more empathy, understanding, and compassion you have for that person - is the springboard for this book. By sharing his highs and exposing his lows, Tyler welcomes us into his world in order to help bridge the divides that seem to grow wider every day.

In I Take My Coffee Black, Tyler tells hilarious stories from his own life as a Black man in America. He talks about growing up in a multicultural community and realizing that he wasn't always welcome, how he quit sports for musical theater (that's where the girls were) to how Jesus barged in uninvited and changed his life forever (it all started with a Triple F.A.T. Goose jacket) to how he ended up at a small Bible college in Santa Cruz because he thought they had a great theater program (they didn't). Throughout his stories, he also seamlessly weaves in lessons about privilege, the legacy of lynching and sharecropping and why you don't cross Black mamas. He teaches listeners about the history of encoded racism that still undergirds our society today.

By turns witty, insightful, touching, and laugh-out-loud funny, I Take My Coffee Black paints a portrait of Black manhood in America and enlightens, illuminates, and entertains - ultimately building the kind of empathy that might just be the antidote against the racial injustice in our society.

©2021 Tyler Merritt (P)2021 Worthy Books

Critic reviews

“A sad, happy, moving, troubling, inspirational, humorous, and brutal account of the people and experiences that formed this exceptionally well-formed man.... (Tyler Merritt)...subtly and kindly reminds us of how much we have in common and that assumptions are made by fools.” (Jimmy Kimmel)

Who’s helping who?

I thought when I picked up this book, that I was just going to do an acquaintance a favor and support his book with a read through and a review. I had been a fan of Tyler Merritt for a hot minute. I had been inspired by his YouTube videos. Moved to tears by them. I had graduated from the same high school, and had many of the same friends. We had communicated via social media posts and comments in our high alumni group, so as far as this reader thought, I was doing the guy a favor. Oh how wrong I was!!
Tyler takes you on a journey, that no matter what gender or race you are, you will discover something about yourself through his experiences. Listening to Tyler’s experiences about growing up in Las Vegas, reflected many of my own but also showed me another part of the city I was oblivious to. Hearing about his struggles becoming a Christian teen during his high school years, again reflected so many of my own. His struggles with sexual relationships and religion being weaponized, again I felt so much like he was telling my stories. The major difference was he is black and I am not. His outcomes were so different than mine though and it was only because of the color of his skin. I never saw things like that before. I never experienced racism like that. And for the first time, I understood how color is still an issue in this country, even today. I understood why it can still be an issue. Tyler did what few people in the world can do. He invited me to look at my experiences in this life and instead of build walls of condemnation and judgement, to lean in to find compassion and maybe even build a community.
My hope for anyone considering this book, is to read this and find healing from your own experiences while finding hope for a better future. I hope that you laugh and smile and cry and get angry but most of all I hope you find a community to lean into when your done. I hope that this story will inspire you to rethink your preconceptions. But mostly, I hope you will stop and allow a 6’2” black man with dreadlocks and a hoodie, to tell you his story and give your soul a hug.

Couldn’t put it down!

This audiobook hooks you from beginning to end. I found myself listening while I worked, while I drove, while I cooked dinner… the author/narrator is incredibly personable and engaging, his story is informative at times, heart wrenching at times, and throughout it all, humor is weaved in brilliantly to make it an incredibly endearing journey. This book challenged me to see the world differently and to actively look at privilege and race from an entirely new perspective. I highly recommend this book… it will become your new favorite!

Promises more than it delivers

The author begins with his description. He is a large, tall black man who uses a bandana to hold down his extensively long ethnic hair. He tells the story of how, despite his attempt to avoid this outcome, his appearance frightens a white woman driver who has stopped her car in a crosswalk he is approaching. This story serves to expose the kinds of preconceived or stereotypical ideas most white people tend to hold without benefit of the awareness of the inner life of this particular large dread locked black man. Merritt fills the reader in to the non-theatening aspects of his typically American education, tastes, and back story. For example, he even lists hockey among his sports interests, has Taylor Swift on his playlist alongside the icons of the rap music field. Merritt's mom and dad emerged from the sharecropping world of the deep south, and develop a middle-class lifestyle. They bring their one child to grow up in Las Vegas, courtesy of his dad's service in the military. Merritt brings his parents into sharper focus as the fine people they are, and the reader is left to admire their strengths as the most typical of American citizens. So begins the author's assertion of the imbalance of appearance vs. reality which black people suffer in typical American automatic distortions.
The author's foray into his school life, which includes his struggle to avoid participation in gangs, is enlightening as to the unsuspected complications that confront a black child . Much of what Merritt shows brings the white reader face to face with the kind of racism that inhabits the lives, still, of black Americans.
The writer uses this book to effectively demonstrate the chasm that exists between white and black Americans. Merritt shows that it is possible to close this chasm by laying aside white stereotypic thinking so as to draw close enough to see the commonalities that exist between the two groups. He brings the reader deeply into his own life and thoughts that belie his outward appearance. Merritt is revealed as a very likable, intelligent and interesting man who nonetheless must endure the active racism that personally mars his present-day experiences as well as the pain of black historic events that underlie persistent American racism.
At one point, the author angrily recites the details of a particularly brutal lynching, and gives another recitation of the names of those unarmed Americans who recently have died at the hands of police.
To continue to probe and reveal current racism, Merritt essentially tells us the most important aspects of his "becoming," dwelling at length on the period that encompasses his life at a small Christian college in California, where he goes to pursue a theater major. Although Merritt doesn't intend for the book to proseletyze the reader, it is at this point in the narrative that the book begins to take on a dual aspect: one being to reveal how the subtleties of race inexorably insinuate itself as one's life progresses, and the other being how Christ unexpectedly finds his way into your life. We watch as Merritt's theater career morphs into starting a Christian rock band, and takes a turn into his becoming a pastor working with disadvantaged kids in Memphis, where he originally goes post-college to pursue his rock singing ambitions. If this sounds like a complicated plot development, it is.
This, to me, is where the book weakens. The author identifies his long-standing flaw as a weakness for women, something which ultimately wrecks his life as a man of God. Spoiler alert: Merritt has what he calls an inappropriate sexual relationship with a volunteer, which, when discovered leads to his losing his pastor's position. The book becomes a long and winding exploration of his interior thoughts as he fights a losing battle to hold onto his job. Not too much further along, another and more devastating sexual brouhaha occurs, leaving Merritt a broken man. What follows is an examination of the author's conviction that black men are best able to find solace in their mothers in such fraught times. This search for solace carries the reader into Merritt's discovery of a "brother" in one of the leads in the Broadway blockbuster "Hamilton."
If all of this sounds very dreary, Merritt's story is told by an entertainer, after all. The author has a sly, droll wit which he employs over and over in the telling of his story.
If you come to this book in the Audio book format, you are treated to the author's entertaining narration, but also a to a distressing last half-hour that dissolves into an increasingly incoherent conversation between the author and his "brother."
I had high hopes for this book, which was touted by Jimmy Kimmel as a mind-altering experience for white people seeking insights into their own racism and the subtleties of white privilege. The book seems to live up to this promise at first, but overall disappoints as it devolves into the story of the author's checkered religious journey.

Just buy it!

Never have a heard a book be read so well by the author. Tyler keeps it real and very entertaining. You will not be disappointed.

Tyler Merritt invites you into his life. And by the end you will feel like you have his number in your phone.

You will laugh a lot. You may cry a bit. You will learn things. You will find that you have at least one thing in common. Probably more than one. You will definitely feel like he is a friend. You will want to meet his parents. You will want more info on “He who shall not be named.” And you will want to sit and have coffee with him. But the best part of the audiobook is not just that it is Tyler himself reading it, but he adds things that aren’t in the printed version (I know this because I read it first). And the surprise at the end is very special! This San Jose girl who has been seeing shows at the Center for the Performing Arts by AMTSJ and now Broadway San Jose, was happy for some insight into the workings of a show…and, after tonight she FINALLY gets why Tyler is so excited about Hamilton the musical!!

Captivating

This is the type of book that when someone interrupts your reading you give them the side eye so they know you are interrupting something important. Good Job my friend!

listen to this book

i only have one thing to say about this book. amazing 👏 I laughed, I cried...
go listen, now!

First Audiobook. Best Book EVER

Where do I start?? This is one of the best books I have EVER “read”. Tyler Merritt’s ability to reach out and GRAB your heart is like nothing I have ever experienced. Buy this. Listen to it. Share it with EVERYONE. Thank you, Tyler, for fighting the good fight, every single day.

Fantastic! Highly recommend.

What an amazing book written by an amazing person. The Audible book was so fun to listen to. I’m so glad I listened rather than read this book. He is raw, authentic, funny, intelligent, creative, inspiring and so many other things. He opened my eyes to a lot of things, one in particular is Grace and what it’s like to be a black man in America and the horrible racism that he experiences. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone. I wish I had the chance to know him because I can tell he is an amazing friend.

Read this book.

Required reading for all the humans! This book is everything. It's funny, inspiring, heartbreaking, educational, raw and HUMAN. So human. The audiobook is sublime, narrated by the author and some friends. It is fun and super personal in a way that you feel like you must be best friends with this dude by the end of it. I have loved many an audiobook and never written a review. This book is important. I had to share: Thank you Tyler Merritt.