Black Like Me
By:
John Howard Griffin
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Lowest New Price: $6.94
List Price: $14.00
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Description:
In the Deep South of the 1950s, journalist John Howard Griffin decided to cross the color line. Using medication that darkened his skin to deep brown, he exchanged his privileged life as a Southern white man for the disenfranchised world of an unemployed black man. His audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history is a work about race and humanity-that in this new millennium still has something important to say to every American.
Publisher: NAL Trade
Release Date: 2003-05-06
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
oh wow this is unforgettable! - This book was recommended to me, and i bought it and it sat on my shelf for a time. I got it down the other day and started reading and could not put it down. It was amazing.
I was brought back to so many memories of the deep south and the attitudes, (that still are now today) prevailing in that time.
I admire this man's courage so much. I despaired at the attitudes the white people had tword him. The look, the tone of voice, the lonliness.
When he looks into the mirror for the first time, he is greeted by, himself yet a stranger.
To walk in another man's shoes is indeed a gift of God, and to be able to have compassion for that experiance is great.
This will be one of my fave. books along with Watership Down and several others i have read over and over again.
This would be a book you could read over again and get more and more from.
Amazing book.
Customer Review: 4 out of 5
proof that something relatively minor can pack a punch - 'Black Like Me' by John Howard Griffin was bombastic when it was first published in the early 1960s. It brazenly articulated the differences on how people, in particular the author, are treated in the Deep South based on the color of their skin. The author had his skin darkened through chemicals and ultraviolet light. He traveled from New Orleans to Atlanta by road (mostly bus) and chronicles how people looked at him differently just because he was black. For a white man he found the experience utterly appalling. It was also staggering how various white men approached the author to discuss very crude sexual matters, thinking that African-Americans are only of any value based on their sexual prowess.
This book should easily be considered five stars by most reviewers. However the book is flawed. The author is not a particularly fine writer; he has a tendency to ramble. And I feel the author has taken some journalist liberties. I wanted more of the facts about people, what they look like, what they said and did, etc. But the author seems to be inconsistent; sometimes he wants to lecture us on racism, other times he delivers a documentary on his travels.
Bottom line: an important and very shocking read. Recommended.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Constructing Race, the artifice of being Other - Before there was comic "Soul Man" etc., there was this 50's investigative memoir about a white male 'passing' as a black man to 'experience' black culture. Also, try Philip Roth's "The Stain" movie and book based on a real life BM passing for WM.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Black like me: One of the best books I have ever read - This book is the account of a white man, named John Howard Griffin, who turned himself black to study the real extent of racism. It starts out with his experiences in New Orleans as a black man. He knew about some of the things that are done to black people, but didn't know the full extent of how much white people try to degrade the sense of value or self-worth of all black people. He experiences having to walk miles ot get a drink of water, working for hours and having just eough money to eat that day, and the whites attempts at lowering all black's self worth, including the "hate stare." However, New orleans is relatively nice for Bkacks. When he reads that in Mississippi there was a lynching case the FBI had found tons of evidence for and the White grand jury wouldn't even open the packet of evidence. The mississippe folks claimed they had wonderful relationships with the Negros. Griffin had even met some of them before, and talked about there relationships with the Negros. He saw a whole new side of them when he went as a black man. He was horrified at how inhumanely people could treat other people and shares very insightful thoughts ion what racism was really like.
I would highly reccomend this book for someone to read, although it's not for younger children. it''s more for tenns and audults. It has a plethora of large words that some with smallish vocabularies might not understand. Otherwise this is one of the best boos I have ever read and I highly reccomend you read it.
Customer Review: 5 out of 5
Black Like Me - Though approaching the fiftieth anniversary of the events in this book, reading BLACK LIKE ME today shows both the inroads America has made towards erasing the blight of racial intolerance, as well as the limits that America has in truly educating itself about all kinds of Hate. Indefensible Hate still exists here, and there is no indication that it will make as great a stride in the next fifty years as it has in the last fifty.
Without question, this book should be required reading for all teenagers (and adults) across the country. To understand another's perspective is the first, primary step in eradicating intolerance. This book (which is a slight bit didactic at points) is the remarkable journey of a man who bothered to really try to understand the life of the black man in the American South as best as he could. Of course he could never truly KNOW, but he certainly took pains to do what he could to understand the experience better than anyone before.
Students (eighth-graders) in my Honors Language Arts class are required to read this book, and I hope they will discover from where we as a nation have traveled. Those who easily bandy about epithets or think unkind thoughts about others (whether because of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, heritage, or ability) might get an honest sense of perspective by taking the trip with John Howard Griffin.
Better yet, after reading this book, ask yourself these questions (and I will ask my students): "If given the opportunity to change my appearance so dramatically as to appear to be from a different race for six weeks, would I do it? What would I fear going into it? Suppose I was told after four weeks that it was impossible to change back; how would it make me feel?"
For a country that falsely prides itself on equality for all, I believe that our conversations about racial equality are sorely lacking in our public dialogue. BLACK LIKE ME would be an excellent place to start a meaningful conversation.
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