About this item
In this engaging follow up to How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, the recipient of PEN New England Award for nonfiction and finalist for the National Book Award sharply examines and explains Black life and culture with equal parts candor and humor.In Magically Black and Other Essays Jerald Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique to create a bracing and often humorous examination of Black American life. He thoughtfully addresses the inherent complexities of topics as eclectic as incarceration, home renovations, gentrification, the crip walk, pimping, and the rise of the MAGA movement, approaching them through various Black perspectives, including husband, father, teacher, and writer. The collection's overarching theme is captured in the titular essay, which examines the culture of heroic action African Americans created in response to their enslavement and oppression, giving proof to Albert Murray's observation that the "fire in the forging process . . . for all its violence, does not destroy the metal that becomes the sword."
About the Author
Jerald Walker is a professor of creative writing at Emerson College. His writing has appeared in publications such as the Harvard Review, Mother Jones, the Iowa Review; the Missouri Review; the Oxford American; the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Creative Nonfiction, as well as four times in Best American Essays. He is the author of Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, which won the PEN New England/L. L. Winship Award for Nonfiction.Author photo: Brenda Molife
