★★★★★ 5
brilliant, painful
Format: Hardcover
Timely, provocative, brilliant, painful, and, ultimately, a very necessary step toward authentic national healing and transformation. As a white, long-time fellow traveler, I am so grateful that Dr. Dyson has answered his calling to lead us toward redemptive justice with truth, decency and love--albeit, at times, necessary tough love. I am in my third read already and learning more and more each time.
Dyson's sermon serves as an exceptional read for believer and non-believer alike as it offers a framework and lexicon for us to engage with one another as we work our way through ongoing racially turbulent and polarized times. I am not a critic by trade so I will leave the professional analysis to the experts. I am a K-12 educator and seeker of social justice. I found this work both accessible and challenging in the best of ways. In my daily work, the evidence of the invention of whiteness, white innocence and white fragility and their pernicious impacts are ubiquitously abundant such that Dyson’s claims simply cannot be denied.
Dyson’s sermon is not always a comfortable read. That’s the point. It is a workout for the soul and psyche that results in the growing pains necessary for personal and collective liberation.
Thank you, Rev. Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, for opening your head and heart so broadly and deeply there is room enough for all of us in this racial healing process. The writing of this book is the ultimate act of truth and forgiveness. You have entrusted us with your most profound insights, personal experiences, and extend a vulnerability that humbles and arrests me. As you shared in a recent interview, "your trust in us grows out of forgiveness and the demand for truth for which is stands on, and the love it seeks to extend". Amen! I am in!
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Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2017

