Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Black Like Me
Book Review: But what about Nat King Cole?
Summary: 5 Stars
Read for the first time in the early 1960's when the only contact we had with Black people in Small Town, Wisconsin, was an occasional Nat King Cole record, this book had a profound affect on me. It was the only book I ever read, flipped back, immediately, to the beginning and read again, so great was it's impact. Griffin's story of his encounters with Southern Whites (first as a White Man and then as a Black) in the days of segregation really opened my eyes to a kind of behavior with which I, as a young reader, was not familiar. While it's for certain that racism in Northern Wisconsin existed,it took the form of the "out of sight,out of mind" variety (but God forbid that they ever got any farther north than Milwaukee...). It was not mentioned, but it was there simmering. Griffin's expose, for me, knocked any practice of racism, benign or otherwise, flat on its ass; it made very real the kind of hateful hypocrisy that lies behind an otherwise respectful U.S. of A. citizenry. As I traveled through the South with Griffin, I began to feel the same sense of revulsion the author feels; how could such a thing be? To my young mind it was a mystery. Would Nat King Cole, who everybody loved, be treated like that? And so the seeds of empathy for the oppressed were planted within me (along with a dose of healthy skepticism regarding the nature of man). As I looked at the book again recently, I thought about how lucky I was to have read the book when I did; if I hadn't read it when I did, I might be a very different man today.Book Review: Disappointing and obsessed with his own celebrity
Summary: 1 Stars
I I bought the version with a a Foreward, a Preface, an Epilogue (1976), and other Epilogue (1979) and an AFterword (2006). All of this stuff-lauding Griffin as hero--is longer than the narrative of his experiment!! What a disappointment. The book is full of cliches, and Griffin strikes me (I'm white by the way) as self-important and self-obsessed. Why must he write about every detail of his press interviews and his newfound fame? There is more of this than anything else. He spent a little over 4 weeks as a Black Man (not much really) and aside from the obvious--he experienced racism--there isn't much that is particularly insighful or interesting. Just a lot of rehashing of stereotypes.His obsession with his own celebrity is dull and it makes me wonder about his motives.Book Review: Do you always go by what people around you believe?
Summary: 5 Stars
Black Like Me
Black Like Me is a story of a white man living in Texas, who decides to go far into the Deep South. He wants to experience and write about what it was like to be a black man and how white people treated them. As a person who is of mixed race, I found Black Like Me an interesting book because it was like I could understand from both sides. What I liked about this book is that he as an individual white man actually wanted to be black and wanted to show his own race how it was like for them to treat black people that way. What I also liked about this book is how the friends that he had before did not look at him in any different way even though the color of his skin was darker then theirs. The things about this book that I like the most is that he was okay with everything that would come at him regardless if it was bad or good. He also didn't really let white people talk bad about black people. I believe that he realized that even though he is white he also believes that he is black too. For me being a mixed race with both black and white I feel he knows what its like to be a mixed race as well. What I didn't like was how some white people would try to be his friend and then after a certain discussion point they would say something ignorant or nasty about a black person. What I also didn't like was when Griffin (the main character) had gotten a ride from a white man and while they was talking the white man says that white people think that they are doing black people a favor by putting some white in their blood. Other than some down falls in the book where it was racist a lot, I believe that this was a very good book. I would recommend this book to seventh graders, because when they get into middle school and start realizing that they are from different social statuses that racial comments start to interact. I would also recommend Black Like Me to older people who want to read an interesting book. I don't think that I would change much of anything in this book because everything is real and talks a lot of how they used to live and how they were treated back then in the Deep South. I also don't think that much had changed since the 1960's up until today.
Book Review: Excellent read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a must for anyone interested in reading about racial prejudice from a white man's viewpoint when seen as a black man in the south of america.
Excellent read and well worth buying.
Book Review: Fascinating but could have been better...
Summary: 4 Stars
I just read this book having taken an interest in it for some years and I must say it does give a very glaring eye at the Deep South at the end of the 50's. It's completely heart wrenching and I was very much into reading it but I did feel it was a bit rushed. It would start describing how he felt at certain situations and I would think "break through, he's shedding his persona of a reporter and letting his story take him into itself" but then it would stop. I felt there were a lot of details that could have been added that would have made it so much more powerful. All and all said though it is an American classic that gets its point across and for that I truly respect it. I just wish there were more in it... It really did seem rushed an unfinished, which I thought was even more depressing then the story itself.