Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

I read this in college as part of an American lit class. Until then, I didn't realize how naive and sheltered a life I must've led. This book had a profound impact on my consciousness of what is racism in the US.

I had only known racism in the context of my less than two decades of life in how it pertained to my family and me. I'd seen it in action, but only from the perspective of an Asian immigrant in a very small, almost entirely white, lower middle class municipality. I'd encountered some racial slurs in Brooklyn, but I didn't understand them. And then we moved to the suburbs of NJ when I was eight. For ten years, I was told to go back to my country, interrogated about what and where Korea was on the map, told by veterans that they'd served in the Korean War and was expected to know what that meant (I really had no awareness because my parents refused to talk about it), and only ever temporarily befriended by people who wanted to use me for my homework or to cheat off of me on a test.

Even when I went to college, the first two years covered my graduation requirements and most of it was surface level analytical thinking - it was to ensure we had a broad education of the liberal arts basics. I took this American literature class after declaring my majors, one of which was English literature. It was a pivotal moment for me to realize how different racism is to people outside my own demographics. While the book took place in the 50s, I was able to recognize how little had changed since then, once my eyes and my mind opened up to listening to accounts from my fellow students. This book and the other works we read by Richard Wright (Black Boy and The Outsider) are largely responsible for my internal sense of justice, why I seek activism and antiracism, why I donate to the causes I do, and why I vote the way I do in every election at every level of government.

This is the same review I'll be leaving for the other two books mentioned above. And I really need to reread all of them soon!