Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine

“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.”*

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...