What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker

The co-founder and editor-in-chief of VerySmartBrothas documents the evolution of a city, a family, and a man using language that runs the gamut from irreverent to uproarious. The author, who is also a columnist for GQ, provides an inward-looking examination of the foibles, desires, and fears of a black man attempting to make his way in the world, the questions he asks along the way, and the destructive forces (sometimes controllable, sometimes not) that threaten to break him. This cultural landscape is steeped in the legacy of America's domestic immigrants who carved paths out of the South and into the steel and mining towns of Pennsylvania. Young's aspirational personal story parallels the trajectories of other descendants of the Great Migration. By sharing snapshots of his growth from adolescence into adulthood, he offers a glimpse into the crucible that shaped his personality and his politics, both of which came to define the aesthetic of VerySmartBrothas. But where VSB is rooted in the transactional here and now, the author's memoir explores the template upon which white supremacy is based and the recurring themes of oppression that permeate every aspect of black life in America. That Young does this vis-à-vis the tragicomedy of his own experiences makes each vignette that much more poignant. Everyone in America has some level of adjacency to the N-word: how it's used, how it's received, and the context in which the usage is deemed acceptable (or not). In addition to mining that explosive aspect of the cultural landscape, Young also looks at the extreme lengths to which men will go in search of love; how to know when to talk and when it's time to listen; and the fear of failing ones' family and how that sometimes manifests poorly in black men as opposed to more successful strategies employed by their partners. Health disparities, gentrification, and low expectations operating as a de facto form of violence on the bodies and minds of black people are among the author's many prescient themes. Young sharply conveys important truths with powerful effect.

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Starred review from February 1, 2019
Columnist, blogger, and editor-in-chief of VerySmartBrothas, Young delivers a passionate, wryly bittersweet tribute to Black life in majority-white Pittsburgh. Raised by devoted working-class parents who, despite education, talent, and hard work, endure chronic homelessness and ferocious joblessness occasionally interrupted by microbursts of underemployment, Young bounces between suburban and urban schools, constantly reassessing his self-worth and his Blackness. His barbed riffs on gentrification, Black barber shops ( one of the few places where Black men with papers and without college degrees could find honest employment ), basketball, appropriate use of the word nigga, and the obtuseness of white privilege are sharply observed. Young articulates the mingled bemusement, rage, and terror of living in a relatively safe and superficially Black space . . . enveloped by whiteness. On the political front, he writes, For the first 2 hours following the election of Barack Obama, I knew how it felt to be a white American . . . I was reminded of the danger of entertaining that delusion when my black-ass president appeared on the screen and the only thought I could muster was, ?Please don't let those motherfuckers kill him.' A must read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

August 1, 2021

PEN-longlisted essays from the co-founder of VerySmartBrothas.com, about growing up Black and gay in Pittsburgh.

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