Scan barcode
daniellekat's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5
An incredibly powerful and well thought out graphic memoir. I liked the way Bell intermixed personal and public moments that shaped him in big and small ways. I wish there was more about Bell as a parent but overall I thought this was well paced. My major drawback was that I really didn't like the artwork. I thought there was too much text, and coupled with the messy, sketch-like art, I found it hard to focus on.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Racism and Police brutality
Moderate: Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, and Murder
Minor: Classism, Gun violence, Homophobia, Child death, Violence, Islamophobia, Colonisation, and Antisemitism
bookph1le's review
5.0
This is exactly the kind of book white people need to read, and, sadly, the kind of book most won't. If you're white like me and read this and don't feel as if you've been punched in the gut, I don't understand you. It's beyond my comprehension how one human being can read a book like this, witness the way another human being has been treated, and not feel on a gut-deep level the injustice that other human being suffered. What's worse is that what Bell is chronicling isn't just an injustice committed against a single person--as bad as that would be--but the systemic injustices that happen over and over and over again because America refuses to reckon with racism, as well as refusing to acknowledge how racism is embedded in this country's every institution.
I'm sickened when I see what's happening today, how marginalized people in this country are being attacked. If it's not book bans, then it's draconian laws designed to rob people of their bodily autonomy, or it's the stripping away of voting rights, or the war against any attempt to try to encourage more diversity in educational and business settings. I'm tired of watching history repeat itself.
So I'll keep reading books like this one. I'll keep reckoning with the ways I've upheld systems of oppression--both on purpose and inadvertently. I'll try to make myself a better human being because decades from now, when my children are the age I am now, I hope the world they live in bears so little resemblance to the one I live in that they find it hard to believe my world ever existed.
I'm sickened when I see what's happening today, how marginalized people in this country are being attacked. If it's not book bans, then it's draconian laws designed to rob people of their bodily autonomy, or it's the stripping away of voting rights, or the war against any attempt to try to encourage more diversity in educational and business settings. I'm tired of watching history repeat itself.
So I'll keep reading books like this one. I'll keep reckoning with the ways I've upheld systems of oppression--both on purpose and inadvertently. I'll try to make myself a better human being because decades from now, when my children are the age I am now, I hope the world they live in bears so little resemblance to the one I live in that they find it hard to believe my world ever existed.
jordanwilde's review
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
An unfiltered view of being Black in America. A completely vulnerable and exposed story of this man's journey of understanding the context of his blackness in the US. The way he explains bigotry and racism through his art and words is just masterful. A must read for everyone.
rogue_leader's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.75