The Matter of Black Lives: Writing from The New Yorker – A Century of Groundbreaking Essays, Profiles, and Reporting on Race in America

by Jelani Cobb (Editor/Foreword), David Remnick

A collection of The New Yorker's groundbreaking writing on race in America—including work by James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hilton Als, Zadie Smith, and more—with a foreword by Jelani Cobb

This anthology from the pages of The New Yorker provides a bold and complex portrait of Black life in America, told through stories of private triumphs and national tragedies, political vision, and artistic inspiration. It reaches back across a century, with Rebecca West’s classic account of a 1947 lynching trial and James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind” (which later formed the basis of The Fire Next Time), and yet it also explores our current moment, from the classroom to the prison cell and the upheavals of what Jelani Cobb calls “the American Spring”. Bringing together reporting, profiles, memoir, and criticism from writers such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Elizabeth Alexander, Hilton Als, Vinson Cunningham, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Malcolm Gladwell, Jamaica Kincaid, Kelefa Sanneh, Doreen St. Félix, and others, the collection offers startling insights about this country’s relationship with race. The Matter of Black Lives reveals the weight of a singular history and challenges us to envision the future anew.

Genres: Nonfiction, Race, History, Essays, Politics, Social Justice, African American

848 pages, Hardcover

First published September 28, 2021

About the author

Also writes as William Jelani Cobb.

Reviews

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rinkinys sudarytas iš senų ir visiškai šviežių New Yorkeryje skelbtų esė.
Pirmąją J. Baldwino esė "Letter From a Region In My Mind" implantuočiau į smegenis visiems, nepaisant odos spalvos. Likusias - visiems svaigstantiems apie baltųjų pirmenybę.

[Sahitya · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very thoughtful collection of essays from the New Yorker spanning more than five decades, which gives us a historical view of the evolution of Black experience in the country. With essays by great authors like James Baldwin and Toni Morrison whose works I haven’t read before, more contemporary writers commenting on the aftermath of the George Floyd killing, profiles and stories of many Black pioneers like Phyllis Wheatley, Zora Neale Hurston, Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan and more (some whom I was aware of, others I didn’t ), and many other personal stories of living and surviving as a Black individual and the community as the whole - this is a collection that needs to be savored and cherished and reflected upon. Because despite the passage of so many decades, the central question still remains unanswered - what more should Black people do to change America? Will there ever be an end to institutional racism and discrimination and racial violence in this country?

[Shelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was a long book, but I really enjoyed all of it! Below are a few quotes I found interesting, All Chapters were articles from the New Yorker.

Part 1: Reflections

Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

How can you hate a group of people for being who they are?

Part 3: Political Scene

Pauli Murray consistently lived in poverty. She held 4 advanced degrees, had friends on the Supreme Court and in the White House, had spent six decades sharing her life and mind with some of the nation’s most powerful individuals and institutions, Yet she died as she lived a stone’s throw from extreme poverty.

Part 4: Life and Letters

I think that it should be pointed out that what is known as Negro dialect in the South is no such thing It was a relic of the Elizabethan post preserved by Southern Whites in their own closed and static society. They did not get it from the Negros. The Africans coming to America got it from them.

Part 5: Onward and Upward with the Arts

As a Black Girl I am a thing which is violated by filthy beasts. The other is that Western progress and colonization, slavery, Modernism, etc, grew out of a white European need to not feel like the filthy beasts they feared they might be.

Speaking of making an African History Smithsonian building black admis the other white buildings, What I wanted to say was, there’s always been a dark America that people undervalue, neglect, overlook. I wanted this building to say that.

In Washington, DC, there is no museum of American slavery. We have a museum of the Holocaust in Washington, which is a great museum, but, you know, what would we think if the Germans put up a bit museum of American slavery in Berlin and didn’t have anything about the Holocaust?

Part 7:The Uprising and After

The blame belongs to a society that tolerates inadequate and inefficient schools and other public facilities, unemployment, utterly high rents, the lack of recreation grounds, discrimination in industry and public utilities against colored people, brutality and lack of courtesy of the police.

Listen to yourself, not to your accuser, because your accusers are always listening to their own panic about your presence. And if what they are saying, or shouting, threatens your personal safety, protect yourself by any means necessary.

[Stephanie ~~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent collection beginning with James Baldwin. I will treasure this forever! Thank you David Remnick. An absolutely gorgeous compilation. ~

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book will have something for everyone, covering politics, culture, art, memoir and more. I learned so much and was turned on to the histories or work of people I hadn't known of before or had overlooked. Many essays gave me pause, and much to think about. The end chapters were very grim and hit very close to home, as they dealt with dissecting incidents of violence against unarmed black people, from Trayvon Martin up to George Floyd.

[Eric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very uneven. The Malcolm Gladwell selection really highlights his fraudulent methodology, which is harder to detect when applied to subjects I'm largely ignorant of. The Ta-Nehisi Coates piece about MF DOOM was my favorite selection (apart from The Fire Next Time, which I refuse to consider a subordinate part of this collection) but the section on artists and musicians was easily the least enjoyable part for me.

[Jen]

lots of learning to be done. this collection of essays is a reminder of just that.

[J · Rating 5 out of 5]

As I read this, I couldn't help but think that, time and again, these were not stories I would have ever come across if not for this book. There were so many significant figures that I had never even heard of. It's a stunning indictment on the failures of the US education system that, with our "Black History Month" approach to teaching history, I went through primary, secondary, and post-secondary schooling in the US and never even heard of James Baldwin until a week ago. Its frustrating to have so little actual context on black history in the US that I don't even know what I don't know. I clearly have a long way to go in my own education in BIPOC history in North America.

As a side note, the audiobook was excellently done with several narrators to help clarify the different chapters. The change in voice helper to transition from one story to the next. When in anthology is read by a single author, I often have a hard time switching my brain from one story to the next. The writing styles and content varied tremendously from account to account, but the narration was noticeably excellent on top of that.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays that are powerful and on point.

[Vnunez-Ms_luv2read · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very thought provoking and timely read. Outstanding collection of essays that will make one think. Take your time to read and digest the writings. You will not be sorry. Thanks for Netgalley, the author and the publisher of this book for the arc of this book in return for my honest review. Receiving this book in this manner had no bearing on this review.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

A weighty collection of essays that were originally published in the New Yorker. The first essay by James Baldwin, "A Letter from a Region of My Mind," hooked me. I am white and reading this collection deepened my understanding the black experience, as we live in a segregated society. I was in high school living in in Alexandria, Virginia when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and have strong recollection of the Civil Rights movement. In my early adulthood, when I was a mom raising children, I lived without any contact with Black culture, though I continued to admire great Black leaders. Later, and after some personal trauma, the murder of Treyvon Martin opened something up inside me and I've been learning more about the truth since then. That was 30 years ago! (There is a great essay at the end of The Matter of Black Lives, "The Trayvon Generation".) Since then, I have learned more about the African American experience, but lived distanced from it in largely white communities on the west coast. Several years ago, my daughter and her family moved to South Carolina and I lost my son to fentanyl. Visiting my daughter in South Carolina, I observed more blatant racism, visceral really, there. Then George Floyd was murdered and I began to grasp that these lynching were always part of the Black experience. The Matter of Black Lives is such a great book! As MLK said "justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle." Sadly, as I reflect on my life, for the first half of it I lived insulated from the reality of life for African Americans. I feel ashamed that this has been my story, nonetheless, going forward I hope to live with actions fully committed to justice.

[Katie Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book (sort of) for a magazine editing class I’m taking because my professor is hosting a discussion with Jelani Cobb, the editor of this book (in addition to David Remnick). Unsurprisingly, the writing throughout this book is just so good. It has been really interesting to read from an anthology of writing from The New Yorker spanning decades—especially significant because most of the work included was written by Black writers. I can’t even express how much I’ve learned while reading this anthology—in terms of the historical, personal, and political. The last section “The Uprising and After” was especially powerful and poignant to read—essays written during and after the nationwide protests that erupted in response to the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and every other Black person preceding them and coming after them killed by the police and other white supremacists and racists.

In threading all of the included essays into one book, the reader can grasp how much of what has led us to this point is connected to and influencing the current moment. Cannot recommend this book enough and am so excited to hear from Jelani Cobb at my professor’s upcoming event. Stoked!!!

[Bruin Mccon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is quite long, as you’d expect from an anthology, and includes so many moving and important perspectives. The Fire Next Time kicks off the book and many more recent articles from the New Yorker follow. The collection hit me hard in many parts but in one of the last pieces, a mother talks about moving after neighbors called the police on her two sons who were riding their bikes in the neighborhood. That one hurt the most but even worse, it’s not something that surprises me at this point. The stories of the Watts riots, where cops would arrest Black men for no reason so they wouldn’t be able to get a job with a criminal record. I didn’t know it but should have. In the final few sentences of the last piece, we learn of the long stream of micro aggressions that happened to the author, although some are not so minor. There are so many moments revealed in the book that are shocking but sadly not at all a surprise.

[lyric · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with most anthologies, some of these pieces were definitely better than others. I was surprised by how boring I found Zadie Smith's essay on Key & Peele, considering how good a writer she is. In fact, a lot of the section on visual and performance arts was surprisingly boring (and I had been expecting it to be one of the most interesting). By far the best one in that section was the essay on the singer Marian Anderson. Still, a lot of the essays in this book were compelling. The ones about Zora Neale Hurston, Phillis Wheatley, and Toni Morrison come to mind as my favorites, as well as the one on the perception of West Indians versus African Americans in the United States. I actually learned a lot from this collection --- I had never heard of Pauli Murray before reading it, or P. Jay Sidney, or about the Pullman porters' strike. Ultimately, a worthwhile read. 3.5 stars.

[AnnieM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read many of these articles in the New Yorker over the years but am so happy that they are combined in this important anthology which includes essays/letters from James Baldwin to Henry Louis Gates Jr., to Zadie Smith and many others. Edited by Jelani Cobb who is a prolific writer (books and New Yorker) in his own right, this is a comprehensive examination of black lives as written about in the New Yorker (so starting in 1962 not really before as far as I can tell). The title is a great rephrasing of Black Lives Matter and to me reveals the stories and history we tend not to learn in school. A great and interesting read.

Thank you to Netgalley and ECCO for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

[Andrew Corsini · Rating 5 out of 5]

This must be the most essential book I've read this year, so vast and encompassing, at times beautiful, poignant and harrowing, sometimes all at once. There's so much here to digest and think about, and so many of these essays are incredible. There's an incredible melancholy piece by Jamaica Kincaid about a lost hat. There's a fantastic recollection of a surprisingly thoughtful conversation between Martin Luther King and a misguided southerner. And then there's the incredible amount of pain and anger, evident in stories like "American Inferno".

[Jack Heller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a collection of 45 essays published between 1943 and 2021 in The New Yorker. The essays are categorized as Reflections, Personal Histories, The Political Scene, Life and Letters, Onward and Upwards with the Arts, Annals of the Law, and The Uprising and Afterwards. Subjects of the essays include Martin Luther King, Barak Obama, Zora Neale Hurston, Louis Farakhan, a lynching, quilting, Hurricane Katrina, several legal cases, anti-racism, the Black Lives Matters movement, various presidential commissions, etc.

This was one of the best books I read in 2022.

[Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading these essays with sincere interest and a desire for understanding offers the prospect of informing a reader on one of the most important issues facing the United States, what is it like to be Black in America. With informed perspectives maybe we can finally make progress. Be prepared for an emotional, intellectual and visceral journey. It will also take some time to get through 45 essays and 818 pages, but it will be well worth it. I highly recommend it!

[Crystal Toller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Writing from The New Yorker

This is a collection of essays that were originally published in The New Yorker. I got this book from the library because I saw the title and it looked interesting. I really enjoyed all the essays and felt the arrangement of them within the book was very well done. Wish I could afford to subscribe to the magazine so I could read more by some of these authors.

[John Chidley-Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

A challenging read for a few reasons. Obviously, the subject matter was tough, especially a chapter on the abuse of intellectually disabled children within Georgia's segregated education system. But also, the dozens of writers that contributed to this collection were of uneven skill level and the New Yorker's quirky style can sometimes be very distracting.

That said, this is a really vital work and I learned a lot.

[Ign33l · Rating 5 out of 5]

Since i read this fat book i ball everydae.
I got the right idea on how to change mybinnerself in order to adapt to the whitr and black world.
This stories are powerful and they show how the hood is.
Moving out from the hood and from that hood mentality is the key; equality in the jungle and respect is what everyone wants.
Pimpin is hard but is and will always be part of the culture and subconsious, the pimp game is the animal side and make it happen

[Cecile · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, my predominantly white GOTV group realized that they could indeed become more sensitive to and knowledgeable about the experience of black people in this country.

As a black person, I was hesitant to join the reading group they wanted to start. It would be too easy for Whites to assuage any experience of guilt and revelation without doing the cognitive and emotional work required to grasp systematized racism and its effects, just by merely having some black folk on board.

Once the safety rules were laid out and agreed upon, along with another Black person joining to the group, we developed a pattern of what to read, who would create discussion questions, etc.

We’ve been reading chapters at a time of many books, essays,listening to TedTalks.

Landed on this volume and it has been so enriching. History my white-washed education robbed from me.

Since the summer of GF’s death, we’ve been meeting once a month for the most part.

[Sara]

A beautiful and meaningful collection of essays from some very impressive writers. This would make an excellent gift and also serves as a reference book. If you have teenagers in your home, you ought to have this on your book shelf and periodically have them read an essay from the collection and then discuss it around your dinner table.

[Shana Z · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars rounded up. By the nature of the length of this tome, there are bound to be highs and lows. Some of these pieces, which were written as long ago as 1947, are an absolute gut punch of astute commentaries on the Black American experience. Others seemed to be unusual choices for this anthology. Regardless, I certainly recommend.

[Aisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars for a really well written and well edited collection of articles originally from The New Yorker about black lives - their careers, their structural/societal challenges, and their joy. Some of the essays were particularly harrowing, all were really well done, and it was enlightening and angering and just important to read.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful collection of essays that are by turn educational, entertaining, thought-provoking, and downright gut-wrenching. There were several times I had to put it down to let the material sink in or simply set it aside in favor of some lighter fare. Well worth the time and effort to plow through, though, without a doubt.

[Reginald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unnecessary long book. Felt like there were a bunch of filler words/ paragraphs in this book. Too much describing this and that and turning around and describing what is being used to describe is overkill at times.

Overall good book. Brings / introduces historical figures into present day and makes you think how would I have reacted/ lived during those times.

[Rebecca O’Dell · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems the stories of oppression, hope and life haven’t changed much over the years. Race has been such a part of the American psyche since the white man came to town. Each story is memorable and meaningful

[LaShanda Chamberlain · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book represents a great collection of essays spanning several decades. Jelani Cobb does an excellent job making the case for the matter of black lives with the use of essays from a range of critical topics. I learned a great deal from reading these essays.

[Carol Storm · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book of writing on race in America is made up entirely of pieces printed in the New Yorker. None of them are older than 1962. Either there were no black people living in America before 1962, or there were no black people writing for the New Yorker before 1962. 'Nuff said?