Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education - Rilegato

It has become routine to witness black boys meeting violent ends. Captured on police dash cams or bystander smart phones we watch black boys die as videos replay hourly on cable news and are clicked feverishly on YouTube. It is still rare to watch black boys grow--to hear them laugh or cry, to declare their passions and to reason carefully. This is part of why Smith's book is so affirming, necessary, even delightful despite its brutality and angst. Mychal Denzel Smith answers the pressing but unasked question, what would happen if all those black boys felled by bullets had a chance to make mistakes, read books, fall in love, hone skills, take new paths, and grow up? The story is fully and unflinchingly Mychal's and because Mychal is so distinctively self-aware, so intellectually invested, and emotionally raw, it cannot simply stand in as a generic tale for all the lost black boys-- except that they too would have had stories entirely their own to tell if only they had had a chance to write them. We owe it to them and more importantly to ourselves to read Mychal's book and render visible what we would rather forget --Melissa Harris-Perry, Presidential Endowed Chair of Politics at Wake Forest University and host of Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC

If I kept a diary of my deepest thoughts, plaguing insecurities and varied triumphs this would be it. It is a cover to cover conversation with the reader on the complexity of (hopefully) growing to be a Black Man in the American Empire. Mychal's coming of age book, his first, is a masterful meld of personal reflection, political analysis and honest insight that yearns to be felt, must be read and demands to be seen. --Umi Selah, Organizer and Co-founder, The Dream Defenders

One of the country's most prominent young writers on race delivers an unflinching account of what it means to be a young black man in America today, and how the existing script for black manhood is being rewritten in one of the most fascinating periods of American history.