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America Made Me a Black Man (2022) by Boyah J. Farah: a Somali refugee's memoir of race in the United States
America Made Me a Black Man is a 2022 memoir by Boyah J. Farah, published by Harper in the United States and by Scribner in Britain in 2023. Farah left Somalia during the civil war, passed through a refugee camp in Kenya and arrived near Boston as a teenager. The book describes how his early love for America gave way to experiences of racism at school, at work and with the police. It was named an NPR best book of 2022, and reviewers were divided about it.
America Made Me a Black Man
- Author
- Boyah J. Farah
- Year
- 2022
- Publisher
- Harper (US); Scribner (UK, 2023)
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780063073357
- Sources
- 5 sources
The book
America Made Me a Black Man: A Memoir is the first book by Boyah J. Farah. Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, published it in the United States in September 2022, and Scribner published a British edition in May 2023 (Kirkus Reviews; Simon & Schuster UK). It was nominated for an NAACP Image Award and named one of NPR's best books of 2022 (Harper).
His journey
Farah spent his early childhood in Somalia, where he remembers feeling free. When war came, his mother walked her children to a refugee camp in Kenya, and from there the family moved to a suburb outside Boston (MPR News). According to Publishers Weekly he was about fifteen when he arrived, in the early 1990s, and came with a strong love for America (Publishers Weekly). He arrived without a birth certificate and without knowing his birthday for certain, but carrying a detailed family history in his head (Kirkus Reviews). See Somalis leave, 1988 to 1991, Refugee camps and Somalis in the United States.
What it describes
The memoir's argument is in its title: Farah writes that he did not understand what it meant to be a Black man until he became an American (MPR News). He describes a high school guidance counsellor who steered him towards manual work despite his grades, while his brother was told to learn to drive a truck and his sister to become a mother. He went to college anyway, then spent more than ten years in a clerical job, watching colleagues he saw as less qualified promoted above him. After he called a supervisor racist he was suspended and then dismissed, and a legal settlement followed. He also describes encounters with police, a traffic stop and a false complaint, and an officer who suggested sending his younger brother back to Somalia (Kirkus Reviews; Publishers Weekly).
How it was received
Reviews were divided. Kirkus Reviews called it "an eye-opening, upsetting catalog of indignities that no one should have to suffer in a supposedly free country" (Kirkus Reviews). Publishers Weekly called it a "vitriolic memoir", found the prose at times overblown, and noted that the author uses composite characters, compressed timelines and reconstructed dialogue; it concluded that the book was "less a realistic account of racial divisions than a vivid portrait of the paranoia they inspire" (Publishers Weekly). Farah discussed the book on Minnesota Public Radio in 2022, where he spoke of both loving and being frustrated by his adopted country (MPR News).
Where to read it
It is available in hardback, paperback, ebook and audiobook. Other memoirs of Somali lives in the diaspora on this site include This Is What America Looks Like by Ilhan Omar and A Man of Good Hope by Jonny Steinberg.
Sources
- Kirkus Reviews · kirkusreviews.com
- Simon & Schuster UK · simonandschuster.co.uk
- Harper · harperlibrarybookclub.com
- MPR News · mprnews.org
- Publishers Weekly · publishersweekly.com
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