The book, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker, is a unique narrative and window into the life of not just any man, but a black man facing modern society. His story is told uniquely through a series of essays that cover his life as a whole. The narrative begins when he is in his youth, with a quickly changing cover of his school history. His father remains unemployed, and his mother is forced to cover their family. Even though it is just Damon, his father, and his mother, his mother is not quite able to support the Young family by herself. Because of this, the family goes through many financial struggles, in the beginning and throughout the story. The author covers his life, struggles, and most importantly, inner feelings and thoughts as he navigates through life, as a person always wondering, “Is it because I’m black?" Despite his relatively financially unstable youth, Damon begins writing poetry. While his poetry started as a way to seduce girls, it developed into a potential career for him. Throughout the book, he continuously uses his skills to pursue careers in the writing industry, beyond just teaching. Going into this book, I believed that the black-person reality of discrimination was something of the past. Despite my original thinking, I can say that it was neither confirmed nor denied. Even more so, I now realize that I can’t actually understand the effect of having a black definition in today's society. In my best interpretation of it, the black community faces a notable amount of direct and indirect discrimination. However, indirect racism becomes the dominant pressure, an act of hiding its existence at all. It was a surprise to me—a shock of cold water—to come to this realization. The whole book was a surprise to me. Indirect racism became almost the focal point of this book, with even less direct racism examples. Rather than being called slurs, he more often faced the question, “Is it because I’m black?”. The book becomes a collection of stories that when looked at singularly could be just an unlucky experience. However, when he takes the pieces and forms his whole story, you get to see racism in a light only visible to the one facing it. This book, a window into another life, only allows people to touch the tip of the iceberg. The window that this book built allowed me to see a glimmer of how actually to describe racism today. It forever changed my thinking from the undeveloped thoughts I had before. The book forced me to realize that I had, without thinking, forced racism into this box that I only allowed positivity to leak through. The rest of it, the reality that racism is still heavily prevalent today, was trapped because of my unconscious will to see that part of life positively. Part of growing up, however, is my realization that these shades of white are diluted with drops of different shades. This book did much to develop and grow my thinking beyond the assumption that something is either completely present or completely gone. -Ashton S
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AuthorSTenth grade students at Decorah High School share how they're reading outside of their own experiences and how it has changed them. Categories
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November 2022
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