The I Index

How to Make a Slave and Other Essays (21st Century Essays)

Top of the pile

92

/100

I Index Overall Rating

Readers

92/100

Critics

91/100

Scholars

N/A

Author:

Jerald Walker

Publisher:

Mad Creek Books

Date:

October 30, 2020

Personal essays exploring identity, work, family, and community through the prism of race and black culture.

What The Reviewers Say

Jennifer Szalai,
The New York Times
The essays in this collection are restless, brilliant and short; all but one are fewer than 10 pages. The brevity suits not just Walker’s style but his worldview, too. Longer pieces would require the kind of connective tissue that might risk turning the essays into closed systems, sealing off entries and exits. Keeping things quick gives him the freedom to move; he can alight on a truth without pinning it into place..
Dontaná McPherson-Joseph,
Foreword Reviews
This act of reconciling the inherent humanity of Black people against the position they have been held in in American society is present in all of the essays of the collection; each deals with the effects of racism.
Caleb J. Gayle,
Harvard Review
... messy, composite, and complex.

Kirkus
Powerful essays offers an incisive glimpse into life as a Black man in America.