Awards

• Winner of L.A. Times Book Prize (The Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose) 2019

Overview

""I am black--and brown, too,"" writes Emily Bernard. ""Brown is the body I was born into. Black is the body of the stories I tell."" In these twelve deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up black in the south with a family name inherited from a white man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop while taking graduate studies at Yale, marrying a white man from the north and bring him home to her family, adopting two babies from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily white New England college town. Each of these essays goes beyond a narrative of black innocence and white guilt and sets out to discover a new way of telling the truth as the author has lived it. ""Blackness is an art, not a science. It is a paradox- intangible and visceral; a situation and a story. It is the thread that connects these essays, but its significance as an experience emerges randomly, unpredictably . . . Race is the story of my life, and therefore black is the body of this book.""

Full Product Details

9781101972410

Table of Contents

Reviews

Of the 12 essays here, there's not one that even comes close to being forgettable. Bernard's language is fresh, poetically compact, and often witty ... Bernard proves herself to be a revelatory storyteller of race in America who can hold her own with some of those great writers she teaches. --Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air Black Is the Body brings lucidity, honesty, and insight to the topics of race and interracial relationships ... quietly compelling ... [Bernard's] stories get under your skin. --Carlo Wolff, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Bernard's lyrical book details traumas and pain from decades past to interrogate the nuances of her own life: growing up black in the South, marrying a white man from the North, and surviving a violent attack which unleashed the storyteller in her. --Entertainment Weekly Echoes of Joan Didion--terse yet beautiful writing, a bracing honesty--in the graceful new essay collection by Emily Bernard ... Black Is the Body marks the debut of an essayist in command of her gifts, a book that belongs beside the best of contemporary autobiography. --Hamilton Cain, Chapter 16 Conceived while the author was hospitalized after being stabbed by a white man, these 13 formidable, destined-to-be-studied essays mark the emergence of an extraordinary voice on race in America. --Oprah Magazine Like the absurdly devastating crime that opens this riveting collection, Bernard's essays are impossible to turn away from. Linked by the author's powerful voice and by her experiences of the world--of survival, of falling in love, of interracial marriage and friendship, and of motherhood--each account tells the agonizing story of race in America with realism, nuance, and profound hope. A supremely honest and utterly gripping book. --Nell Freudenberger Bernard's honesty and vulnerability reveal a strong voice with no sugarcoating, sharing her struggle, ambivalence, hopes, and fears as an individual within a web of relationships, black and white. Highly recommended. --Library Journal (starred review) Lucid ... deeply felt, unflinchingly honest, and openly questioning ... [Bernard] illuminates a legacy of storytelling ... and elaborates on the relationship between blacks and whites. A rare book of healing. --Kirkus (starred review) Contemplative and compassionate ... Bernard's voice is personable yet incisive in exploring the lived reality of race ... [Her] wisdom and compassion radiate throughout this collection. --Publishers Weekly

My very favorite book that I have read so far this year...It's really life changing. If you get no other book this year, get Black Is the Body by Emily Bernard. --Ann Patchett Of the 12 essays here, there's not one that even comes close to being forgettable. Bernard's language is fresh, poetically compact, and often witty ... Bernard proves herself to be a revelatory storyteller of race in America who can hold her own with some of those great writers she teaches. --Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air Black Is the Body brings lucidity, honesty, and insight to the topics of race and interracial relationships ... quietly compelling ... [Bernard's] stories get under your skin. --Carlo Wolff, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Bernard's lyrical book details traumas and pain from decades past to interrogate the nuances of her own life: growing up black in the South, marrying a white man from the North, and surviving a violent attack which unleashed the storyteller in her. --Entertainment Weekly Echoes of Joan Didion--terse yet beautiful writing, a bracing honesty--in the graceful new essay collection by Emily Bernard ... Black Is the Body marks the debut of an essayist in command of her gifts, a book that belongs beside the best of contemporary autobiography. --Hamilton Cain, Chapter 16 Conceived while the author was hospitalized after being stabbed by a white man, these 13 formidable, destined-to-be-studied essays mark the emergence of an extraordinary voice on race in America. --Oprah Magazine Like the absurdly devastating crime that opens this riveting collection, Bernard's essays are impossible to turn away from. Linked by the author's powerful voice and by her experiences of the world--of survival, of falling in love, of interracial marriage and friendship, and of motherhood--each account tells the agonizing story of race in America with realism, nuance, and profound hope. A supremely honest and utterly gripping book. --Nell Freudenberger Bernard's honesty and vulnerability reveal a strong voice with no sugarcoating, sharing her struggle, ambivalence, hopes, and fears as an individual within a web of relationships, black and white. Highly recommended. --Library Journal (starred review) Lucid ... deeply felt, unflinchingly honest, and openly questioning ... [Bernard] illuminates a legacy of storytelling ... and elaborates on the relationship between blacks and whites. A rare book of healing. --Kirkus (starred review) Contemplative and compassionate ... Bernard's voice is personable yet incisive in exploring the lived reality of race ... [Her] wisdom and compassion radiate throughout this collection. --Publishers Weekly

Author Information

EMILY BERNARD was born and grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and received her PhD in American studies from Yale University. She has been the recipient of grants from the Ford Foundation, the NEH, and a W. E. B. Du Bois Resident Fellowship at Harvard University. Her essays have been published in journals and anthologies, among them The American Scholar, Best American Essays, and Best African American Essays. She is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont.

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