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A review by martinatan
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays by Damon Young
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
5.0
One indicator of how good a memoir this is, is how emotional I felt reading the acknowledgements at the end. Really appreciate the complex feelings and reflection that this book holds. I have a lot of admiration for Damon Young’s ability to balance levity and gravity and bring up events from his life with so much specificity about how he felt at the time they happened, in contrast with how he can look back on it with greater wisdom.
Graphic: Racial slurs
Moderate: Cancer, Cultural appropriation, Violence, Slavery, Sexual harassment, Misogyny, Infidelity, Homophobia, Grief, Bullying, Pregnancy, Police brutality, Murder, Death of parent, Cursing, Sexism, Colonisation, Death, Classism, Terminal illness, and Sexual content
Minor: Child death, Rape, Medical trauma, Addiction, Genocide, Drug use, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual assault, and Mass/school shootings