#jerald walker

[jerxiong]

Currently reading: "Magically Black and Other Essays" by Jerald Walker (Amistad, 2024)

Imagine my surprise and immediate delight when I came across this in Libby! Jerald Walker is one of my favorite essayists--great storyteller, great commentary on race through humor and irony. For some reason, I never caught the news that he had a new book coming out, so I had no idea. Just the other day, I remembered that I didn't have his previous collection because I had gifted it to a friend, and now I'm sad that I don't have that book. Walker is one of those authors where I KNOW I need to buy the book because I'll be referring back to it often as an essayist.

I got a chance to listen to almost halfway through the book in one day because I was without a car and taking a train and bus to get around. It accompanied me throughout that afternoon, and the signature humor made me smile.

I usually don't read two books at once, but this one is an audiobook while the other one is a print book, so I read one or the other whenever the moment calls for it. Can't wait to finish this book.

[kammartinez]

There’s No Surviving Without Hope | Los Angeles Review of Books

Nicole Graev Lipson interviews Jerald Walker about his new essay collection, “Magically Black.”

[onebluebookworm]

Black History Month 2022 - February 20

How to Make a Slave and Other Essays - Jerald Walker

[beshenstvo]

It was one of those things that you instantly recognize as profound, and then, because you don't quite understand it, try to forget as quickly as you can. It was also one of those things that you cannot forget. And so it roamed freely in my subconscious, occasionally coming into sharp focus to remind me of its presence...

Jerald Walker

[kimthedork]

I got a little behind, again, with my Essay a Day project. I think it's at least partially because I was struggling so much to find things to say about the essays in Best American Essays 2007 that it made it hard to stay engaged. But, after getting that far in the book... I needed to see it through. So here are the last few I read: 

Essay #14: "A Carnivore's Credo" by Roger Scruton from Harper's Magazine

This one gave an ethical argument for why people who care about animals have an ethical obligation to eat meat. The last paragraph sums it up pretty well:

I would suggest that it is not only permissible for those who care about animals to eat meat; they have a duty to do so. It meat eating should ever become confined to those who do not care about animal suffering, then compassionate farming would cease. Where there are conscientious carnivores, there is a motive to raise animals kindly. Moreover, conscientious carnivores show there depraved contemporaries that there is a right way and a wrong way to eat. Duty requires us, therefore, to eat our friends. 

Essay #15: "What Should a Billionaire Give -- and What Should You?" by Peter Singer from The New York Times Magazine

This was a really good essay. Singer argues (and calculates) that if the world's richest 10 percent of Americans gave a comparatively small percentage of their wealth, we could eliminate world poverty. It was eye-opening. 

Essay #16: "Dragon Slayers" by Jerald Walker from The Iowa Review

This is another essay I really liked. Walker, an African American writer, talks about a mentor from the Iowa Writer's Workshop who taught him how to write about African American life in a heroic way, and not to become complicit in stereotypes. I'm very curious to read Walker's memoir, Street Shadows, after finishing this essay. 

Essay #17: "Apocalypse Now" by Edward O. Wilson from The New Republic

And finally... a secular humanist writes a letter to an evangelical pastor (and by extension, all evangelical Christians) and argues that science and religion can and should come together to save the environment. It doesn't really sound like a crazy proposition after you finish the essay. 

And that's the end of my reading in Best American Essays 2007. I'll wait to share some concluding thoughts when I review the collection on my blog, but overall I didn't love this one. I thought too many of the essays had a political slant, and that a collection needs more variety. That said, I think every essay was chosen for it's ability to challenge the reader into thinking about the world differently, and I have to appreciate that.