<p><strong>A Finalist for the NAACP Image Award</strong></p><p><strong>Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay</strong></p><p><strong>An NPR Best Book of the Year</strong></p><p><strong>A </strong><em><strong>Washington Independent Review of Books</strong></em><strong> Favorite of the Year</strong></p><p><strong>From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the absurdities and anxieties of being Black in America</strong></p><p>For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America<em> </em>is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as 'How should I react here, as a professional black person?' and 'Will this white person&#39;s potato salad kill me?' are forever relevant.</p><p><em>What Doesn&#39;t Kill You Makes You Blacker </em>chronicles Young&#39;s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him.</p><p>It&#39;s a condition that&#39;s sometimes stretched to absurd limits: creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; provoking the angst that made him question if 'being straight' was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble; and generating the surreal experience of watching his Pittsburgh neighborhood getrify from predominantly Black to 'Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies.'</p><p>And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white.</p><p>From one of our most respected cultural observers, <em>What Doesn&#39;t Kill You Makes You Blacker </em>is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity.</p><p>--<strong>Ibram X. Kendi, National Book Award-winning author <em>Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America</em></strong></p>