A review by melanieapril
How to Be Black by Baratunde R. Thurston

3.0

I had been looking forward to reading this book for several months, so it bore the burden of high expectations and ultimately proved to be a little disappointing. I think the book's chief problem is that it tries to be too many things in too few pages. Is it a piece of humorous writing? Well, it's not very funny. I chuckled a few times but never laughed until I hurt. Is it a memoir? The author shares his life story and a few personal anecdotes, but his stories feel rushed. The only real character to emerge from the book is Thurston's awesome-sounding mother, and even she lacks a distinctive voice. Is it an effective treatise on racism? Maybe. The book should really be titled "How to Be Less Racist," since it is most successful when it points out the obnoxious ways white people take their privilege for granted. Unfortunately Thurston has crowd-sourced half these sorts of passages to his friends and included their spoken opinions verbatim in the pages of his book. It's like he was preparing a podcast and at the last minute decided to turn it into a written work. Although his friends' musings are interesting, they are difficult to read in print.