Rating: 5 / 5
“But I am not impressed with America’s progress. I am not impressed that slavery was abolished or that Jim Crow ended. I feel no need to pat America on its back for these ‘achievements.’ This is how it always should have been. Many call it progress, but I do not consider it praiseworthy that only within the last generation did America reach the baseline for human decency.”

I knew this book was going to be good. But as soon as I started it, I was immediately more invested than I could have imagined. I planned to listen to a chunk one night and ended up listening to the whole thing in one sitting. The author, Austin Channing Brown, is the one reading the audiobook as well, and I really appreciated that detail.

This book is not about white comfort and making white people feel better about ourselves (and it 100% shouldn’t be). But I think some reviews Ive seen ended up centering on white people (e.g. whether the book educated them on how to be an ally, whether the author is ‘hating’ on white people). That wasn’t every review, but if you are reading this book and are noticing reactions like that, I encourage you to pause and reflect on your reactions and then reread, so you can really listen to the author’s perspective. We really do not need to bring our fragility and defensiveness to someone’s lived experience.