Black Like Me

* * * * *
by John Howard Griffin
Content: 5/5
Poetic Mastery: 3/5
Literary Truth: 5/5

Mr. Griffin’s work (10 million+ copies sold; required reading in many universities and public schools) detailing the life of an African American in the South comes from a unique angle: it comes from a white man who changed to a black man for 7 weeks and lived in the deep south in the late 50s. When Griffin alters his superfacia he and we white readers enter a shocking, shocking world that it is impossible to imagine.

In simple, unassuming, accurate narrative Griffin’s journal is of inherant substance sensational. Moreover, since the book is simple narrative, a relation of facts, it is unarguably persuasive. It is not an interpretation of data, a study, a thesis, any thing that could be debated or re-evaluated. It is fact. And the fact is more horrifying and recent than I was prepared to discover. This book is, without question, required reading – especially for whites :D. Read Black Like Me, even if you never read another book I read. The book will take only two days or less to read, but it should magnificently alter your thinking, a bonus worth more of an investment of time.