'What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker' Is A Powerful Look At One Black Man's Life
Writer, critic and humorist Damon Young chronicles his efforts to endure the battles that come with being black; the beauty of his book is that he never tries to make it comfortable for his audience.
For Damon Young — writer, critic, humorist, and the co-founder and editor-in -chief of VerySmartBrothas — being black in America is to "exist in a ceaseless state of absurdity; a perpetual surreality that twists and contorts and transmutates equilibrium and homeostasis the way an extended stay in space alters human DNA."
Reading his work, one quickly understands black people perennially struggle to find a space to breathe without the pressure of institutionalized racism. In Youngchronicles his efforts to endure the plethora of battles that come with being black, including expectations
