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How to Make a Slave and Other Essays
For the black community, Jerald Walker asserts in How to Make a Slave, “anger is often a prelude to a joke, as there is broad understanding that the triumph over this destructive emotion lay in finding its punchline.” It is on the knife’s edge between fury and farce that the essays in this exquisite collection balance. Whether confronting the medical profession’s racial biases, considering the complicated legacy of Michael Jackson, paying homage to his writing mentor James Alan McPherson, or attempting to break free of personal and societal stereotypes, Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique. The result is a bracing and often humorous examination by one of America’s most acclaimed essayists of what it is to grow, parent, write, and exist as a black American male. Walker refuses to lull his readers; instead his missives urge them to do better as they consider, through his eyes, how to be a good citizen, how to be a good father, how to live, and how to love.
166 pages, Paperback
First published October 30, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 137 reviews
February 21, 2022
A thoughtful, intelligent, and observant essay collection that centers on Jerald Walker’s experiences as a Black man in the United States. I appreciated Walker’s honesty about both his struggles and triumphs, such as encountering stereotypes about Black men as aggressive and sexual predators as well as witnessing his Black sons face racist comments from their peers. I enjoyed how he grounds his essays in specific scenes, such as a white female professor falsely accusing him of sexual misconduct because he spoke assertively at a faculty meeting. These scenes made the essays entertaining and visceral instead of vague and abstract. At several points I felt that Walker included intriguing, unexpected, and powerful commentaries on issues related to race, such as the importance of not writing about Black people in pathologizing/stereotyping ways as well as how sexual violence occurs across various privileged and marginalized communities.
As a professor who grew up in Chicago’s South Side, Walker’s approaches his own life and societal issues with nuance and fresh writing. Each essay in this collection feels on the briefer side yet still communicates important points. There was one instant where Walker writes about having the thought that he should go to a tanning bed so that he can make himself more advantaged for a faculty job; while Walker recognizes this thought as problematic, I wish he had explored his light-skinned privilege a bit more in that essay. Overall though I’d recommend this collection to those who like essay collections and reflecting on issues of race and racism. Also, Walker’s clear love for his sons felt heartwarming to read about.
As a professor who grew up in Chicago’s South Side, Walker’s approaches his own life and societal issues with nuance and fresh writing. Each essay in this collection feels on the briefer side yet still communicates important points. There was one instant where Walker writes about having the thought that he should go to a tanning bed so that he can make himself more advantaged for a faculty job; while Walker recognizes this thought as problematic, I wish he had explored his light-skinned privilege a bit more in that essay. Overall though I’d recommend this collection to those who like essay collections and reflecting on issues of race and racism. Also, Walker’s clear love for his sons felt heartwarming to read about.
November 4, 2020
The Publisher Says: For the black community, Jerald Walker asserts in How to Make a Slave, “anger is often a prelude to a joke, as there is broad understanding that the triumph over this destructive emotion lay in finding its punchline.” It is on the knife’s edge between fury and farce that the essays in this exquisite collection balance. Whether confronting the medical profession’s racial biases, considering the complicated legacy of Michael Jackson, paying homage to his writing mentor James Alan McPherson, or attempting to break free of personal and societal stereotypes, Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique. The result is a bracing and often humorous examination by one of America’s most acclaimed essayists of what it is to grow, parent, write, and exist as a black American male. Walker refuses to lull his readers; instead his missives urge them to do better as they consider, through his eyes, how to be a good citizen, how to be a good father, how to live, and how to love.
I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: The reason we read essays, as readers, is almost the opposite of why we read fiction of all stripes, not to broaden our experience of humanness but to particularize it. Dr. Walker's essays about being Black in academia, in the slums of his boyhood, of being a small-town dad of sons who are Othered by their skin color, of being his own unique self in a world that wasn't ready with a place for him to fit, are as particular as one can hope to find. And that is why they resonate so fully with my older, whiter, place-was-made-before-I-cared self. How often have I wondered what in the hell I should say when my half-Black Young Gentleman Caller makes a joke about hair (I have next to none, his is abundant, and the contrast tickles him to no end. Ha ha ha) or his (pale) skin color..."I am closer in hue to a banana than a plum," says Dr. Walker at one point...and am left shtumm because, well, no matter that he's chosen an old white man for his confidant and bedmate, I can still hear the hurt in his voice or see it in the frozen-for-a-second smile when someone's comment is a microaggression. To my delight, my silence or my simple smiling and laughing without comment have kept me from experiencing that swallowed hurt at my words.
So far.
The years Dr. Walker spent in seeking an MFA were spent being mentored by James Alan McPherson, a monadnock of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and one of the most admired and sought-after guides to the unforgiving world of seeking literary excellence. His story collection, Elbow Room, won him the first Pultizer Prize for Fiction awarded to a Black person. Who better to create another Black male artist? And so he did, in Dr. Walker, after some rough moments at the beginning of their association. He was capable of delivering great advice, and making it go down like a spoonful of sugar instead of the bitter and damned toxic draft of reality that it truly was:
That one sounds so innocent...and the one-word lance through the armor and into the heart is why so many deeply talented and delightful writers don't ever quite make it, get past the early parts of a career. How cruel it is to have to commit to endless hours of honing and polishing and rending one's psychic flesh for a few grand on a good day, and free on a bad one! But success is all in practice and work, and no one in American history has known that more than out unappreciated and unsupported artists. So few make it....
But some become epoch-defining superstars. Memories of Michael Jackson, unsurprisingly, loom large in Dr. Walker's youth as it coincided with the man's inescapable pop-culture presence in the later 1970s and early 1980s. I drove around with Michael Jackson on the radio because he was what was playing, what was in demand, whose talent and sound were *exactly* what the Whitegeist wanted. He sounded, I realized from reading this essay, very different to a young Black boy in the Chicago ghetto. Dr. Walker and his brothers were caught up in a different stream of the times than I was, and this passage tells me what I need to know: We shared the planet, for better or worse, in ways that can't be fully reconciled but can be felt, deeply, in our love of someone who made something powerful and lasting:
How we all mourn our quiet fantasy lives being rendered impossible by death...and who hasn't dreamed of What Might Have Been?
Running out of room. Go over to Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud for the rest.
I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS BOOK FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: The reason we read essays, as readers, is almost the opposite of why we read fiction of all stripes, not to broaden our experience of humanness but to particularize it. Dr. Walker's essays about being Black in academia, in the slums of his boyhood, of being a small-town dad of sons who are Othered by their skin color, of being his own unique self in a world that wasn't ready with a place for him to fit, are as particular as one can hope to find. And that is why they resonate so fully with my older, whiter, place-was-made-before-I-cared self. How often have I wondered what in the hell I should say when my half-Black Young Gentleman Caller makes a joke about hair (I have next to none, his is abundant, and the contrast tickles him to no end. Ha ha ha) or his (pale) skin color..."I am closer in hue to a banana than a plum," says Dr. Walker at one point...and am left shtumm because, well, no matter that he's chosen an old white man for his confidant and bedmate, I can still hear the hurt in his voice or see it in the frozen-for-a-second smile when someone's comment is a microaggression. To my delight, my silence or my simple smiling and laughing without comment have kept me from experiencing that swallowed hurt at my words.
So far.
The years Dr. Walker spent in seeking an MFA were spent being mentored by James Alan McPherson, a monadnock of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and one of the most admired and sought-after guides to the unforgiving world of seeking literary excellence. His story collection, Elbow Room, won him the first Pultizer Prize for Fiction awarded to a Black person. Who better to create another Black male artist? And so he did, in Dr. Walker, after some rough moments at the beginning of their association. He was capable of delivering great advice, and making it go down like a spoonful of sugar instead of the bitter and damned toxic draft of reality that it truly was:
"Stereotypes are valuable," he said. "But only if you use them to your advantage. They presnet your readers with something they'll recognize, and it pulls them into what appears to be familiar territory, a comfort zone. But once they're in, you have to move them beyond the stereotype. You have to show them what's real."
"And what's real?" I asked.
Without hesitation, he said, "You."
That one sounds so innocent...and the one-word lance through the armor and into the heart is why so many deeply talented and delightful writers don't ever quite make it, get past the early parts of a career. How cruel it is to have to commit to endless hours of honing and polishing and rending one's psychic flesh for a few grand on a good day, and free on a bad one! But success is all in practice and work, and no one in American history has known that more than out unappreciated and unsupported artists. So few make it....
But some become epoch-defining superstars. Memories of Michael Jackson, unsurprisingly, loom large in Dr. Walker's youth as it coincided with the man's inescapable pop-culture presence in the later 1970s and early 1980s. I drove around with Michael Jackson on the radio because he was what was playing, what was in demand, whose talent and sound were *exactly* what the Whitegeist wanted. He sounded, I realized from reading this essay, very different to a young Black boy in the Chicago ghetto. Dr. Walker and his brothers were caught up in a different stream of the times than I was, and this passage tells me what I need to know: We shared the planet, for better or worse, in ways that can't be fully reconciled but can be felt, deeply, in our love of someone who made something powerful and lasting:
While I do not know if this is true, I have a vague memory that the three of us, in 1983, watched the Motown 25 television special together, and maybe we rose at some point to to attempt Michael's moonwalk before collapsing back into our seats, succumbing to the dope coursing through our veins, much as dope would course through Michael's, nearly three decades later, and stop his heart.
Mine stopped, for a moment, when I heard the news. And in that pause before grief, I had a vision of the Walker Six, dancing and singing...and then it was gone.
How we all mourn our quiet fantasy lives being rendered impossible by death...and who hasn't dreamed of What Might Have Been?
Running out of room. Go over to Expendable Mudge Muses Aloud for the rest.
April 18, 2022
I really enjoyed this collection of short, honest, and humorous essays. I don’t think I had read anything by Jerald Walker before but I will be looking for more from him. I liked the way he centered his experiences with great details and a sharp sense of humor. His honesty about racism he has experienced was really great to help me get a glimpse of a different perspective. I loved the way the author talked about his class on African American literature as not focusing on the African American people as victims and what the white enslavers had done wrong but looking at it through the lens of how strong and courage the African Americans were and I can’t wait to apply this. It was something I had never considered.
November 4, 2020
Tore through this collection of essays within a couple of hours while avoiding the internet/news on election night. These essays are moving, timely, and full of humor, despite the often heavy subject matter. One of the best (and most important) books I've read this year-- highly recommended.
January 2, 2021
Walker is a brilliant writer and there's much to chew on in here. At times, the essays made me uncomfortable but that I think was the point. He really probes into race issues in academia and doesn't take predictable positions on them. I am still thinking about some of the essays in this rich collection.
December 27, 2020
"you have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." - Frederick Douglass
this quote from Frederick Douglass is both title and the living embodiment of Jerald Walker. HOW TO MAKE A SLAVE AND OTHER ESSAYS is a thought-provoking collection on both his personal and professional life. the reader is given a glimpse into Walker's lived experience as a Black man trying to navigate his identity, family, academia, and community with race being at both the forefront and foreground.
what made this collection stand out to me was Walker's ability to write about the subtleties of Black life we all find too familiar. from being poorly seated at the back of restaurants, asked by patrons if you work in a store your shopping in, and the policing of emotions in public settings. quite often, in those situations, it’s easy for structure at bay to keep black and other marginalized folks from feeling assured in their ability to speak or act against them. however, throughout this book, the reader was able to witness Walker's ability in challenging or resisting the urge to fall siege to the current structural dynamic in place.
the most powerful lesson that runs through this book was the words and wisdom inherited from James Alan McPherson. who taught Walker to understand the Black resistance we have been practicing for centuries in this country. learning how to resist this system and how we write our own stories with ourselves at the center. we come from a tradition of resistance and fight and struggle, and that these are the qualities that make it possible for people to have success. and less about where we come from. this theme flowed throughout this book!
this collection showcases a deeply personal and humorous critique of our culture. i wasn't entirely sure what to expect, or the angle Walker would take in his examination. i was afraid that he might root his writing in respectability or fail to comprehend his own class difference. i applaud Walker's honesty, vulnerability, and humor in these essays. it fits nicely with other notable collections i hold in high regard.
this quote from Frederick Douglass is both title and the living embodiment of Jerald Walker. HOW TO MAKE A SLAVE AND OTHER ESSAYS is a thought-provoking collection on both his personal and professional life. the reader is given a glimpse into Walker's lived experience as a Black man trying to navigate his identity, family, academia, and community with race being at both the forefront and foreground.
what made this collection stand out to me was Walker's ability to write about the subtleties of Black life we all find too familiar. from being poorly seated at the back of restaurants, asked by patrons if you work in a store your shopping in, and the policing of emotions in public settings. quite often, in those situations, it’s easy for structure at bay to keep black and other marginalized folks from feeling assured in their ability to speak or act against them. however, throughout this book, the reader was able to witness Walker's ability in challenging or resisting the urge to fall siege to the current structural dynamic in place.
the most powerful lesson that runs through this book was the words and wisdom inherited from James Alan McPherson. who taught Walker to understand the Black resistance we have been practicing for centuries in this country. learning how to resist this system and how we write our own stories with ourselves at the center. we come from a tradition of resistance and fight and struggle, and that these are the qualities that make it possible for people to have success. and less about where we come from. this theme flowed throughout this book!
this collection showcases a deeply personal and humorous critique of our culture. i wasn't entirely sure what to expect, or the angle Walker would take in his examination. i was afraid that he might root his writing in respectability or fail to comprehend his own class difference. i applaud Walker's honesty, vulnerability, and humor in these essays. it fits nicely with other notable collections i hold in high regard.
January 5, 2021
Overall, the collection was solid. I definitely think the title of the collection is what does a lot of work for it.
I was a little let down by a few essays: Testimony, smoke, strippers, and advice to a family man. I thought the title of those essays were setting me up (as a reader) to really dive into some really great social commentary and critique. I think Walker does a great job at titling his work to draw readers in. I just wish there was more follow-through. But also that could be my fault as a reader with having high expectations.
I understand what he was trying to do with these; yet, I think h missed the mark unfortunately especially with strippers. it just seemed jumbled and like a filler of sorts.
My favorite essay was HEART. that was so powerful. Him discussing his love for his brother and how his brother handled his marriage. This essay touched on themes such as addiction, resentment, family, and emotional and physical abuse. I think this was top 2 essays from this collection for me.
I was a little let down by a few essays: Testimony, smoke, strippers, and advice to a family man. I thought the title of those essays were setting me up (as a reader) to really dive into some really great social commentary and critique. I think Walker does a great job at titling his work to draw readers in. I just wish there was more follow-through. But also that could be my fault as a reader with having high expectations.
I understand what he was trying to do with these; yet, I think h missed the mark unfortunately especially with strippers. it just seemed jumbled and like a filler of sorts.
My favorite essay was HEART. that was so powerful. Him discussing his love for his brother and how his brother handled his marriage. This essay touched on themes such as addiction, resentment, family, and emotional and physical abuse. I think this was top 2 essays from this collection for me.
December 26, 2020
Excellent!
21 essays rich with irony
..and tinged with humor!
The essays are compact, concise and
...loaded as chocolate truffles! Addictive!
2020 Shortlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
21 essays rich with irony
..and tinged with humor!
The essays are compact, concise and
...loaded as chocolate truffles! Addictive!
2020 Shortlist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
December 27, 2020
3.5 stars. This is a collection of previously published autobiographical essays, mostly about the author’s perception of the racism he experiences living in a New England college town which is “96 percent white, conservative, and rural”. It’s a fascinating mixture of pain, anger, and self-aware amusement. I liked the intimate, first-person present tense narration he sometimes uses.
He took a job with a private college which had a “diversity problem” which he was more than happy to help them with, considering the increased salary it would bring. “The image I wanted to project was of a black man who was proud but not angry, kind but not buffoonish, streetwise yet cosmopolitan, someone who could gracefully diversify cocktail parties as the host’s only black friend. By the time the interview arrived, I had watched every YouTube video of Will Smith I could find.”
He openly enjoys “driving white liberals up the wall” by denying them the chance to pity him. But he also describes a white colleague who was unreasonably frightened that he would become violent when he aggressively argued his point in an academic setting.
The author had a rough inner-city childhood. (Apparently both of his parents were blind, which he barely mentions here, so now I have to go find his other memoir about growing up in the ghetto with two black, blind parents who were members of a white supremacist doomsday cult.) His wife had a much gentler childhood, and as a result, “Her tolerance for racism was extreme, in your view, which was to say she resisted it only if it were actually occurring, whereas all you required was its possibility.”
Sometimes the racism he experiences is blatant, such as an encounter with a campus security guard known for harassing non-white faculty members. Sometimes it’s debatable: he describes walking through the local Whole Foods, wearing a blazer and a tie, and watching all of the white women clutch their purses when he approaches. Sometimes it comes across as understandable paranoia: did the waiter give us a bad table because we are black? Are the medical staff under-treating us because we are black?
He took a job with a private college which had a “diversity problem” which he was more than happy to help them with, considering the increased salary it would bring. “The image I wanted to project was of a black man who was proud but not angry, kind but not buffoonish, streetwise yet cosmopolitan, someone who could gracefully diversify cocktail parties as the host’s only black friend. By the time the interview arrived, I had watched every YouTube video of Will Smith I could find.”
He openly enjoys “driving white liberals up the wall” by denying them the chance to pity him. But he also describes a white colleague who was unreasonably frightened that he would become violent when he aggressively argued his point in an academic setting.
The author had a rough inner-city childhood. (Apparently both of his parents were blind, which he barely mentions here, so now I have to go find his other memoir about growing up in the ghetto with two black, blind parents who were members of a white supremacist doomsday cult.) His wife had a much gentler childhood, and as a result, “Her tolerance for racism was extreme, in your view, which was to say she resisted it only if it were actually occurring, whereas all you required was its possibility.”
Sometimes the racism he experiences is blatant, such as an encounter with a campus security guard known for harassing non-white faculty members. Sometimes it’s debatable: he describes walking through the local Whole Foods, wearing a blazer and a tie, and watching all of the white women clutch their purses when he approaches. Sometimes it comes across as understandable paranoia: did the waiter give us a bad table because we are black? Are the medical staff under-treating us because we are black?
February 17, 2025
really enjoyed this
January 20, 2021
Unfortunately, not an essay collection that will stay with me.
December 6, 2020
Great essays from a new-to-me author.
May 18, 2021
This is one of those books that was due at the library so I picked it up and read the first essay to see if I was actually going to read the book. I expected something darker, denser, heavier on cultural critique. It was instead, short, funny, wry and insightful. How to Make a Slave begins "Gather scissors, construction paper, crayons, popsicle sticks, and glue. Take them to the den where your thirteen-year-old sister sits at the table thumbing through your schoolbook on black history. Smile when she notices you and turns to the pre-marked page with a photo of Frederick Douglass. It's one from his later years, when his Afro was white. Realize you need cotton balls." I was hooked immediately. This is that rare collection that I can imagine rereading and enjoying even more the second time around.
The essays aren't necessarily "light" but they are deft, observant and deeply intelligent. Now I want to read whatever else he's written.
The essays aren't necessarily "light" but they are deft, observant and deeply intelligent. Now I want to read whatever else he's written.
August 31, 2021
RATING: 4 STARS
The bright cover caught my eye at the library on the "New Books" display. I had not read anything by Jerald Walker, nor had this book made my radar yet, so I didn't have any expectations. Walker is a gorgeous writer. His words really paint the images in your mind - good or bad. Through his short essays, we learn a lot about his experiences and background, even though he does not go into details. I wanted to learn more about his childhood, and of course had to look up his backlist of books. He has two memoirs, which I have put on my TBR and will be looking for. This is a great book for when you want to read something great but don't want to commit time. The essays can be read on their own, but it's hard to stop once you start.
The bright cover caught my eye at the library on the "New Books" display. I had not read anything by Jerald Walker, nor had this book made my radar yet, so I didn't have any expectations. Walker is a gorgeous writer. His words really paint the images in your mind - good or bad. Through his short essays, we learn a lot about his experiences and background, even though he does not go into details. I wanted to learn more about his childhood, and of course had to look up his backlist of books. He has two memoirs, which I have put on my TBR and will be looking for. This is a great book for when you want to read something great but don't want to commit time. The essays can be read on their own, but it's hard to stop once you start.
December 4, 2020
This was an excellent collection of essays that I'm sure I'll want to revisit several times. The language serves the sentiment perfectly, with short pieces that each were meaningful and well-crafted. "Breathe" in particular stood out to me, but each of these essays deals with a daily struggle and a larger issue, and Walker admits to his own weaknesses as readily as he embraces the fundamental right to have weakness.
As I think about it more, it strikes me that almost every one of these essays mentions breathing, and how even breathing as a black man isn't something guaranteed. The fact that Walker uses breathing as a way to calm himself, to take a moment, to center himself, is powerful. Breathing is powerful.
As I think about it more, it strikes me that almost every one of these essays mentions breathing, and how even breathing as a black man isn't something guaranteed. The fact that Walker uses breathing as a way to calm himself, to take a moment, to center himself, is powerful. Breathing is powerful.
December 12, 2020
Jerald Walker is a powerful essayist who writes in a strong, funny, memorable way about race and racism. Most of his essays are depictions of scenes and happenings from his life, often with a little twist in perspective at the end, none of them completely neat and orderly in its message or implications. The essays themselves are very short and I read them occasionally over the course of a month, my main complaint being that they can get a little repetitive.
March 21, 2021
I was kind of surprised to find another collection of essays by a person of color in my hands after recently finishing Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. It is only 147 pages and can easily be read at one sitting. From each and every story, I felt the point of view of the author and how his childhood in Chicago's South Side affected his world now as a Professor of Creative Writing at Emerson College. I don't know how to describe the stories except to say he was eloquent in talking about how he raises his sons and how his reactions differ from those of his wife and several friends and co-workers who were raised in much different circumstances.
September 14, 2021
GREAT essay collection. Walker has a really clear point to get across in his essays, and he makes his point well. It's a very short collection, and easy to get through. There's a lot of humor in here. In under 150 pages I feel like we get a really holistic view of the author. I'm so glad this was longlisted for the NBA.
March 9, 2021
Would have liked to have seen 2 or 3 of the essays stretched out and examined deeper. There's so much packed into each essay as Walker floats between different periods of his life that you often finish the chapter wanting to unpack at least some of what you just read. Very thoughtful and interesting perspective that I wanted more of.
March 2, 2022
Walker's story constructions and prose are enthralling. He has a way with words. I hope this book is integrated into schools in the future. It is brutally honest about racism and what POC+ face on what is likely a daily basis. Always trying to educate myself on the lives of others.
Read
January 16, 2021The title essay starts the collection off by setting an impossibly high bar, and even though it'd be impossible for Walker's others to clear it, it's a thing of beauty to see them try.
February 4, 2021
It's not what you think...or is it? A collection of essays that tackle everything from
February 2, 2025
I LOVED this collection, especially “Simple.” I will definitely be continuing to read through all of Jerald Walker’s essays.
Read
March 4, 2021phenomenal collection
November 17, 2020
One of the best essay collections I’ve ever read! So happy that I picked it up. Worth the read.
September 3, 2021
"Racism is part and parcel of our culture, the great American disease with which we all are afflicted; there will be no cure until we accept this diagnosis."
"I told him that black literature is often approached as records of oppression, but that my students don't focus on white cruelty but rather its flip side: black courage."
"Stereotypes are valuable," he said. "But only if you use them to your advantage. They present your readers with something they'll recognize, and it pulls them into what appears to be familiar territory, a comfort zone. But once they're in, you have to move them beyond the stereotype. You have to show them what's real."
"...life is a motherfucker; living it anyway, and sometimes laughing in the process, is where humanity is won."
"This was the context for me: I was forty-five, the son of a teacher, the grandson of sharecroppers, the greatgrandson of slaves. The lower branches of my ancestral tree bore the weight of the lynched; the higher branches bore the weight of the embittered. Such was the landscape of the ghettos in which I had been raised, where many of the adults I knew hated whites, believed racism was insurmountable, and felt obliged to offer their children this blear worldview. The mere mention of the phrase "post-racial" was inconceivable. But then, the election of a black president was too."
"For once I'd like to see portraits of famous African Americans smiling or frozen in laughter, their heads tossed back and hands clutching guts as they considered the absurdities and ironies of their lives."
"There was clearly a holocaust in the making, a systemic denial of future black generations, a conclusion that flowed logically from the vicious legacy of the Deep South. This was the work of the Ku Klux Klan, people believed, and I believed it too. The South, as promised, was rising again."
"My belief that blacks could be only so bad was equivalent to the view, promulgated since slavery, that we could be only so good; to hold one of these views necessitates the holding of the other. And both views, albeit used for different purposes, place false restrictions on our humanity."
"Her tolerance for racism was extreme, in your view, which was to say she resisted it only if it were actually occurring, whereas all you required was its possibility. You had known the man you are dining with to require less."
"Annoying, to be sure, but not demonstration-worthy, not tear-worthy, not worthy of the bullhorn a young man kept bringing to his lips to shout, "The racism ends now!" And each time he did I responded, mentally, that the racism will surely continue, and if you expect to transcend it to you will all need to stiffen your spines."
"I was trying to wrap my head around becoming so accustomed to violence that you assumed it was everywhere, and its forms included everything. Perhaps it was a subconscious survival strategy, a process of convincing yourself that the conditions in which you lived were, by and large, manageable, for people everywhere managed them, and of accepting, for people everywhere managed them, and of accepting that sometimes the conditons prevailed, for people everywhere died."
"Everyone knows how race stories like these begin, after all. But we do not know how they will end."
"I told him that black literature is often approached as records of oppression, but that my students don't focus on white cruelty but rather its flip side: black courage."
"Stereotypes are valuable," he said. "But only if you use them to your advantage. They present your readers with something they'll recognize, and it pulls them into what appears to be familiar territory, a comfort zone. But once they're in, you have to move them beyond the stereotype. You have to show them what's real."
"...life is a motherfucker; living it anyway, and sometimes laughing in the process, is where humanity is won."
"This was the context for me: I was forty-five, the son of a teacher, the grandson of sharecroppers, the greatgrandson of slaves. The lower branches of my ancestral tree bore the weight of the lynched; the higher branches bore the weight of the embittered. Such was the landscape of the ghettos in which I had been raised, where many of the adults I knew hated whites, believed racism was insurmountable, and felt obliged to offer their children this blear worldview. The mere mention of the phrase "post-racial" was inconceivable. But then, the election of a black president was too."
"For once I'd like to see portraits of famous African Americans smiling or frozen in laughter, their heads tossed back and hands clutching guts as they considered the absurdities and ironies of their lives."
"There was clearly a holocaust in the making, a systemic denial of future black generations, a conclusion that flowed logically from the vicious legacy of the Deep South. This was the work of the Ku Klux Klan, people believed, and I believed it too. The South, as promised, was rising again."
"My belief that blacks could be only so bad was equivalent to the view, promulgated since slavery, that we could be only so good; to hold one of these views necessitates the holding of the other. And both views, albeit used for different purposes, place false restrictions on our humanity."
"Her tolerance for racism was extreme, in your view, which was to say she resisted it only if it were actually occurring, whereas all you required was its possibility. You had known the man you are dining with to require less."
"Annoying, to be sure, but not demonstration-worthy, not tear-worthy, not worthy of the bullhorn a young man kept bringing to his lips to shout, "The racism ends now!" And each time he did I responded, mentally, that the racism will surely continue, and if you expect to transcend it to you will all need to stiffen your spines."
"I was trying to wrap my head around becoming so accustomed to violence that you assumed it was everywhere, and its forms included everything. Perhaps it was a subconscious survival strategy, a process of convincing yourself that the conditions in which you lived were, by and large, manageable, for people everywhere managed them, and of accepting, for people everywhere managed them, and of accepting that sometimes the conditons prevailed, for people everywhere died."
"Everyone knows how race stories like these begin, after all. But we do not know how they will end."
December 15, 2020
Short Review: How To Make a Slave and Other Essays, a 2020 National Book Award Finalist and the first essay collection by writer Jerald Walker, is an enthralling, fascinating, and thought-provoking look at race, self-identity, and what it means to be a parent to black children in the 21st century in America, with almost all of the essays clocking in at under seven pages. The collection, which reads more like a series of tight and compact short stories, is powerful, timely, and ushers in the reign of a new black literary icon in today's America. Highly recommended.
Long Review: Jerald Walker may be the most underrated essayist in America today.
Walker, a professor of creative writing at Emerson College, has been known for years as one of the most powerful black voices in literary America, publishing two former memoirs dealing with his experience as a black boy growing up on the Southside of Chicago during the 1970s and ‘80s, and numerous essays in various publications, most of them on the topic of race and how it has shaped his life and the lives around him. He has been published in publications such as Creative Nonfiction, Harvard Review, The Missouri Review, Mother Jones, Oxford American, and The Iowa Review, amongst others, and he has been anthologized in the Best American Essays series five times. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, arguably the best MFA program in America, and prior to teaching at Emerson College, he was a professor of English at Bridgewater State University. In the time since his graduation from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has also been a visiting professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT and in the MFA in Nonfiction Program at the University of Iowa.
Despite his impressive resume, he has never published a collection of essays until now, and one wonders, after reading through the slim but brilliant 151-page collection, why he has waited so long to do so. Luckily, the National Book Awards in 2020 took notice of this collection, the work becoming shortlisted for the award in the Nonfiction Category before ultimately losing out to a biography on Malcolm X, but that doesn’t extinguish the power of this collection whatsoever.
Race is the common theme that runs throughout all of these essays, whether in subtle or stark ways, and it sets the stage early in the first essay of the collection, sharing the title of the book: ‘How to Make a Slave.’ The essay itself, short and tight at only six pages, speaks with readers directly about the experience that Walker has had over the course of his lifetime in regard to discovering race and how it impacts his life versus the life of white people around him. It starts with a description of an elementary school project where he had to give a presentation on Frederick Douglass and make a cut-out of him, and it goes on to dwell on the fact that black history is often serious, depressing, and heavy, unlike that of white history. The essay moves into a discussion of Walker’s exploration of black history as he grows older, such as discovering the FBI tapes of Martin Luther King Jr.’s infidelities and the humor of what King says in some of them, and how he wishes that he could make the overall historical weight on black people lighter in this country. It ends with a discussion of a racist comment made by a white child to one of his two black children and how he must grapple with explaining to the son why white people say such things to black people sometimes. It is a great start to the collection and sets the stage early for the frank and deep conversations about race, duality, and white Americans’ complicity in the suppression of black Americans at all turns since the country was founded.
Immediately following the first essay is the strongest one in the collection in my opinion, an essay titled ‘Dragon Slayer.’ It begins with Walker chastising white liberals and their reveling in the unfortunate aspects of racism, specifically how they like to talk directly about the problems that black people face because of racism instead of how the problems affect them and how they also rise above the adversity in many cases, and it goes onto describe Walker’s time spent at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop during his college years, focusing on his writing mentor and the biggest lesson he was taught. Walker writes: ‘My stories showed people being affected by drug addiction, racism, poverty, murder, crime, violence, but they said nothing about the spirit that, despite being confronted with what often amounted to certain defeat, would continue to struggle and aspire for something better.’ In other words, his writing mentor forced him to recognize that he shouldn’t be writing stories about the bad things that happen to black people, aka the ‘dragons’ of the essay title, but instead how they defeat the forces set against them and how they rise above in the end, aka the ‘dragon-slaying’ of the title. It is a powerful essay, and it made me realize what the important difference is between stories that seem to revel in poverty-racism porn compared to those that are written by writers such as Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead, which are more character explorations of how black Americans overcome their surroundings and circumstances.
From there, the collection doesn’t stop—there is not one bad essay, something near-impossible for a piece of work that features 21 different essays. In “Before Grief,” an essay that was previously selected for the Best African American Essays 2010, Walker dwells on the loss of Michael Jackson and what Jackson meant to the black community at large and him personally. In ‘Inauguration,’ we see Walker struggle with how to describe to his young sons the importance of President Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, and a similar sentiment pervades “Kaleshion,” an exploration of racial dynamics when looking at the difference of dating white women and black women as a black man. “The Heart” is a poignant essay to a brother who does not know how to leave a wife who mistreats both him, their children, and herself, with Walker being a brother who wishes he could help before sharing the pain and anguish he feels on the inside when he has to watch the family unravel as his brother doesn’t take his advice, and “Testimony,” an essay dealing with the importance of basketball to black kids growing up on the Southside of Chicago and their experience one day with a PTSD-afflicted vet on the basketball court itself, speaks to the subtle effects of war and how they silently manifest themselves in ways that people don’t see on the surface.
Other essays are so different from ones that I’ve read before that I found myself marveling at them: “Strippers” is a description of a visit that Walker took to a strip club with two fellow married friends after celebrating the success of chemo on their son’s cancer, and it turns into an exploration of class differences and how all people, no matter what job they are doing, are people at the end of the day who deserve to be treated with respect, and the entire thing is written in the second person. “Race Stories,” one of the later essays in the collection, does a brilliant job at describing an all-too-familiar incident where Walker was stopped by a white security guard in a campus building on the basis of racial profiling, and he reveals what happened by framing it as a story he’s telling to fellow faculty members at a faculty dinner, which makes the essay feel more like a short story in the most thought-provoking way. “The Heritage Room,” treading similar waters, is a frank discussion of a fellow faculty member who accused Walker of sexual harassment on the grounds of him fitting the ‘dark scary black man’ stereotype after he sent her an email referencing an earlier racist comment she had made, and “Feeding Pigeons” is an enthralling piece of prose that describes Walker’s experiences with several gay friends and a professor when he was in college and compares it to a current incident, where a student he failed in one of his classes accuses him of hating straight people, despite Walker being straight himself.
“Once More into the Ghetto,” one of the final essays, is simultaneously Walker marveling at how far he’s come from his former lower-class, drug-ridden childhood and a sarcastic and chiding exploration of how his children look at the place where he grew up in Chicago as a warzone, somewhere far away and imaginary, like Iraq, which is further entrenched when they visit family members there and go over the top when acting scared for their lives.
Many of these essays, in the most serious sense of the word, are the best I’ve read in a long time. Race is the throughline with all of them, whether it’s pronounced or not, and Walker doesn’t shy away from calling out the white patriarchy when he can, or the seeming hypocrisy of white women when it comes to exploring the aforementioned ‘evil, sex-hungry black man’ stereotype that still pervades so much of America today. He does all this in essays that last no longer than a few pages somehow, his ideas and points so distilled, frank, and blunt that they pack the same kind of force as a sucker punch, and they left me still thinking about them days after I had completed the collection and returned it to my local library.
And, if an author ever wants something out of his readers, it’s that—to keep thinking about the ideas, themes, and overarching human elements of their work, whether that be fiction or nonfiction, long after a reader shuts the cover on it for the last time, and Walker far exceeds that goal with this outstanding collection of essays.
Long Review: Jerald Walker may be the most underrated essayist in America today.
Walker, a professor of creative writing at Emerson College, has been known for years as one of the most powerful black voices in literary America, publishing two former memoirs dealing with his experience as a black boy growing up on the Southside of Chicago during the 1970s and ‘80s, and numerous essays in various publications, most of them on the topic of race and how it has shaped his life and the lives around him. He has been published in publications such as Creative Nonfiction, Harvard Review, The Missouri Review, Mother Jones, Oxford American, and The Iowa Review, amongst others, and he has been anthologized in the Best American Essays series five times. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, arguably the best MFA program in America, and prior to teaching at Emerson College, he was a professor of English at Bridgewater State University. In the time since his graduation from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has also been a visiting professor in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT and in the MFA in Nonfiction Program at the University of Iowa.
Despite his impressive resume, he has never published a collection of essays until now, and one wonders, after reading through the slim but brilliant 151-page collection, why he has waited so long to do so. Luckily, the National Book Awards in 2020 took notice of this collection, the work becoming shortlisted for the award in the Nonfiction Category before ultimately losing out to a biography on Malcolm X, but that doesn’t extinguish the power of this collection whatsoever.
Race is the common theme that runs throughout all of these essays, whether in subtle or stark ways, and it sets the stage early in the first essay of the collection, sharing the title of the book: ‘How to Make a Slave.’ The essay itself, short and tight at only six pages, speaks with readers directly about the experience that Walker has had over the course of his lifetime in regard to discovering race and how it impacts his life versus the life of white people around him. It starts with a description of an elementary school project where he had to give a presentation on Frederick Douglass and make a cut-out of him, and it goes on to dwell on the fact that black history is often serious, depressing, and heavy, unlike that of white history. The essay moves into a discussion of Walker’s exploration of black history as he grows older, such as discovering the FBI tapes of Martin Luther King Jr.’s infidelities and the humor of what King says in some of them, and how he wishes that he could make the overall historical weight on black people lighter in this country. It ends with a discussion of a racist comment made by a white child to one of his two black children and how he must grapple with explaining to the son why white people say such things to black people sometimes. It is a great start to the collection and sets the stage early for the frank and deep conversations about race, duality, and white Americans’ complicity in the suppression of black Americans at all turns since the country was founded.
Immediately following the first essay is the strongest one in the collection in my opinion, an essay titled ‘Dragon Slayer.’ It begins with Walker chastising white liberals and their reveling in the unfortunate aspects of racism, specifically how they like to talk directly about the problems that black people face because of racism instead of how the problems affect them and how they also rise above the adversity in many cases, and it goes onto describe Walker’s time spent at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop during his college years, focusing on his writing mentor and the biggest lesson he was taught. Walker writes: ‘My stories showed people being affected by drug addiction, racism, poverty, murder, crime, violence, but they said nothing about the spirit that, despite being confronted with what often amounted to certain defeat, would continue to struggle and aspire for something better.’ In other words, his writing mentor forced him to recognize that he shouldn’t be writing stories about the bad things that happen to black people, aka the ‘dragons’ of the essay title, but instead how they defeat the forces set against them and how they rise above in the end, aka the ‘dragon-slaying’ of the title. It is a powerful essay, and it made me realize what the important difference is between stories that seem to revel in poverty-racism porn compared to those that are written by writers such as Toni Morrison and Colson Whitehead, which are more character explorations of how black Americans overcome their surroundings and circumstances.
From there, the collection doesn’t stop—there is not one bad essay, something near-impossible for a piece of work that features 21 different essays. In “Before Grief,” an essay that was previously selected for the Best African American Essays 2010, Walker dwells on the loss of Michael Jackson and what Jackson meant to the black community at large and him personally. In ‘Inauguration,’ we see Walker struggle with how to describe to his young sons the importance of President Obama’s first inauguration in 2009, and a similar sentiment pervades “Kaleshion,” an exploration of racial dynamics when looking at the difference of dating white women and black women as a black man. “The Heart” is a poignant essay to a brother who does not know how to leave a wife who mistreats both him, their children, and herself, with Walker being a brother who wishes he could help before sharing the pain and anguish he feels on the inside when he has to watch the family unravel as his brother doesn’t take his advice, and “Testimony,” an essay dealing with the importance of basketball to black kids growing up on the Southside of Chicago and their experience one day with a PTSD-afflicted vet on the basketball court itself, speaks to the subtle effects of war and how they silently manifest themselves in ways that people don’t see on the surface.
Other essays are so different from ones that I’ve read before that I found myself marveling at them: “Strippers” is a description of a visit that Walker took to a strip club with two fellow married friends after celebrating the success of chemo on their son’s cancer, and it turns into an exploration of class differences and how all people, no matter what job they are doing, are people at the end of the day who deserve to be treated with respect, and the entire thing is written in the second person. “Race Stories,” one of the later essays in the collection, does a brilliant job at describing an all-too-familiar incident where Walker was stopped by a white security guard in a campus building on the basis of racial profiling, and he reveals what happened by framing it as a story he’s telling to fellow faculty members at a faculty dinner, which makes the essay feel more like a short story in the most thought-provoking way. “The Heritage Room,” treading similar waters, is a frank discussion of a fellow faculty member who accused Walker of sexual harassment on the grounds of him fitting the ‘dark scary black man’ stereotype after he sent her an email referencing an earlier racist comment she had made, and “Feeding Pigeons” is an enthralling piece of prose that describes Walker’s experiences with several gay friends and a professor when he was in college and compares it to a current incident, where a student he failed in one of his classes accuses him of hating straight people, despite Walker being straight himself.
“Once More into the Ghetto,” one of the final essays, is simultaneously Walker marveling at how far he’s come from his former lower-class, drug-ridden childhood and a sarcastic and chiding exploration of how his children look at the place where he grew up in Chicago as a warzone, somewhere far away and imaginary, like Iraq, which is further entrenched when they visit family members there and go over the top when acting scared for their lives.
Many of these essays, in the most serious sense of the word, are the best I’ve read in a long time. Race is the throughline with all of them, whether it’s pronounced or not, and Walker doesn’t shy away from calling out the white patriarchy when he can, or the seeming hypocrisy of white women when it comes to exploring the aforementioned ‘evil, sex-hungry black man’ stereotype that still pervades so much of America today. He does all this in essays that last no longer than a few pages somehow, his ideas and points so distilled, frank, and blunt that they pack the same kind of force as a sucker punch, and they left me still thinking about them days after I had completed the collection and returned it to my local library.
And, if an author ever wants something out of his readers, it’s that—to keep thinking about the ideas, themes, and overarching human elements of their work, whether that be fiction or nonfiction, long after a reader shuts the cover on it for the last time, and Walker far exceeds that goal with this outstanding collection of essays.
December 20, 2021
❕Prioritize reading books by black men. Especially this one. It’s quite refreshing to see a black man reflect on his identity, his sexuality, the way he parents, his career and more. This collection brings humanity to the experiences of being a black man in America.
This essay collection is mostly the author recounting some of his experiences in second person. So some of the essays are written like “one day in April you went to the store and the cashier gave you a weird look. You stared back at the cashier in disbelief wondering why she was giving you that look.” 😂😂 At first I didn’t know what to make of this approach to writing these essays. But I ultimately enjoyed it because it really put you into his mindset and made the essays deeply intimate. But not in a super serious way. They were actually pretty funny and even light hearted at times even though some of the topics regarding race and identity are heavy topics.
One of the more heavy topics was the time a white colleague erroneously accused him of assault. There was also a very serious account of what it was like taking his son who kept having seizures to the hospital.
Then there was some mild accounts of his gay friend convincing him he could make him like a guy and how that impacted how he thought about sexuality.
This book definitely has range and is very well written. It’s a short read and I definitely recommend!
This essay collection is mostly the author recounting some of his experiences in second person. So some of the essays are written like “one day in April you went to the store and the cashier gave you a weird look. You stared back at the cashier in disbelief wondering why she was giving you that look.” 😂😂 At first I didn’t know what to make of this approach to writing these essays. But I ultimately enjoyed it because it really put you into his mindset and made the essays deeply intimate. But not in a super serious way. They were actually pretty funny and even light hearted at times even though some of the topics regarding race and identity are heavy topics.
One of the more heavy topics was the time a white colleague erroneously accused him of assault. There was also a very serious account of what it was like taking his son who kept having seizures to the hospital.
Then there was some mild accounts of his gay friend convincing him he could make him like a guy and how that impacted how he thought about sexuality.
This book definitely has range and is very well written. It’s a short read and I definitely recommend!
December 12, 2020
One of the best essay collections dealing with race I’ve read in many a moon. Jerald Walker is an African American professor at Emerson College in Boston and he has written a poignant, necessary, brilliant and even humorous look at race relations in this country. Many of the essays are about family, his family (both parents are blind, two sons and mixed-race wife), his experience at the college and a powerful essay about his mentor, James Alan McPherson. 5 stars!
November 21, 2020
Jerald Walker is a pleasure to read. And some of these essays are extraordinary; Heart is extraordinary. As is Dragon Slayers. Both works looking at love and that love doesn't look like what we think it will look like after everything we've been told.
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