My Vanishing Country

by Bakari Sellers

Overview

New York Times Bestseller: This insightful and deeply personal portrait of African American working-class life “offers something so authentic . . . compelling” (Charleston Post and Courier).

Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South’s past, present, and future.

Anchored in Bakari Sellers’ hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, My Vanishing Country illuminates the pride and pain that continues to fertilize the soil of one of the poorest states in the nation. He traces his father’s rise to become a friend of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, civil rights hero, and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), in the process exploring the plight of the South’s dwindling rural black working class—many of whom can trace their ancestry back for seven generations.

In his poetic personal history, we are awakened to the crisis affecting the other “forgotten men and women,” seldom acknowledged by the media. For Sellers, these are his family members, neighbors, and friends. He humanizes the struggles that shape their lives—to gain access to healthcare as rural hospitals disappear; to make ends meet as the factories they have relied on shut down and move overseas; to hold on to precious traditions as their towns erode; to forge a path forward without succumbing to despair. 

My Vanishing Country is also a love letter to fatherhood—to Sellers’ father, his lodestar, whose life lessons have shaped him, and to his newborn twins, who he hopes will embrace the Sellers family name and honor its legacy.

“An engaging memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Family trauma—even inherited trauma—can take a tremendous toll on children. But as Bakari Sellers makes plain in My Vanishing Country, family trauma can also be a source of strength.” —BookPage

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062917478
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	05/19/2020
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	449,263
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Bakari Sellers made history in 2006 when, at just twenty-two years old, he defeated a twenty-six-year incumbent State Representative to become the youngest member of the South Carolina state legislature and the youngest African American elected official in the nation. In 2014 he was the Democratic Nominee for Lieutenant Governor in the state of South Carolina. Sellers is a CNN political analyst and served in the South Carolina state legislature. Recently named to ’s 󈬘 Under 40” list, he is also a practicing attorney who fights to give a voice to the voiceless. 

Table of Contents

Introduction: Black, Country, and Proud 1

I The Wounds Have Not Healed: "Don't Be a Dead Hero" 19

II Black and Forgotten 41

III School Daze: The Making of a Morehouse Man 65

IV The Making of a Politician, Part 1 81

V The Making of a Politician, Part 2 95

VI Dreaming with My Eyes Open: Becoming a Leader 109

VII Risk Taking 127

VIII Anxiety: A Black Man's Superpower 151

IX A Voice for the Voiceless 169

X Why Are the Strongest Women in the World Dying? 189

XI Why 2016 Happened and the Power of Rhetoric 205

Afterword 219

Dear Donor Family 223

Acknowledgments 225

Editorial Reviews

Bakari Sellers’ My Vanishing Country is exactly the book we need right now. The issues he raises are deeply personal and important to me. In his captivating memoir, Sellers not only brings a personal touch to the resilient people in places like his hometown Denmark, South Carolina, but he also rings the alarm about dangerous policies being enacted across the state and the devastating impact that they are having on people’s everyday lives.” — Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first woman in U.S. history to become the presidential nominee of a major political party.

"My Vanishing Country is both a timely and timeless book that sheds a light on the unseen and gives a voice to the many who are unheard." — Tyler Perry

“Bakari lays out a blueprint for anyone thinking just because their life starts on a dirt road in the rural south, it must end on a dirt road in the rural south. If you want to know what a black man can achieve in this country with faith in a higher power and a strong family structure, then this is the memoir you need.” — Charlamagne Tha God, author of Black Privilege and Shook One

“My Vanishing Country solidifies Bakari Sellers as a major voice for his generation. He has taken the torch from his father Cleveland Sellers and soared. His brutally honest look at the systemic racism that continues to hold back the black working class is revelatory. His ownership of being Black, Country, and Proud is refreshing.” — Angela Rye, CNN Commentator and CEO of IMPACT Strategies

“Bakari Sellers’ My Vanishing Country is urgent and essential reading brimming with compassion and courage.”  — Van Jones, CNN Political Analyst

“A strong voice for social justice emerges in an engaging memoir.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Family trauma—even inherited trauma—can take a tremendous toll on children. But as Bakari Sellers makes plain in My Vanishing Country, family trauma can also be a source of strength.” — BookPage

From the Publisher

Bakari Sellers’ My Vanishing Country is exactly the book we need right now. The issues he raises are deeply personal and important to me. In his captivating memoir, Sellers not only brings a personal touch to the resilient people in places like his hometown Denmark, South Carolina, but he also rings the alarm about dangerous policies being enacted across the state and the devastating impact that they are having on people’s everyday lives.

Hillary Rodham Clinton

Family trauma—even inherited trauma—can take a tremendous toll on children. But as Bakari Sellers makes plain in My Vanishing Country, family trauma can also be a source of strength.

BookPage

Bakari lays out a blueprint for anyone thinking just because their life starts on a dirt road in the rural south, it must end on a dirt road in the rural south. If you want to know what a black man can achieve in this country with faith in a higher power and a strong family structure, then this is the memoir you need.

Charlamagne Tha God

Bakari Sellers’ My Vanishing Country is urgent and essential reading brimming with compassion and courage.” 

Van Jones

"My Vanishing Country is both a timely and timeless book that sheds a light on the unseen and gives a voice to the many who are unheard."

Tyler Perry

My Vanishing Country solidifies Bakari Sellers as a major voice for his generation. He has taken the torch from his father Cleveland Sellers and soared. His brutally honest look at the systemic racism that continues to hold back the black working class is revelatory. His ownership of being Black, Country, and Proud is refreshing.

Angela Rye

Prepare yourself to be moved when you read My Vanishing Country. Bakari Sellers’ memoir is a touching, poignant, and at times funny paean to a world that many of us know well. Sellers’ deep compassion for his neighbors and unconditional love for his family is ultimately a universal story of hope and faith.

Andrew Gillum

2020-03-02
An African American attorney and politician reflects on the forces that shaped him.

In a candid and affecting memoir, CNN political analyst Sellers, the youngest member of the South Carolina Legislature when he was elected in 2006, chronicles his evolution as a political activist. Sellers grew up in the rural town of Denmark, South Carolina, where his family moved in 1990. Sellers loved being “country,” where he could ride his bike on back roads, fish in the ponds, and play in cotton fields. Even in what he describes as a bucolic setting, the civil rights movement pervaded the family’s life: Both parents were activists; Sellers was “the campaign baby” during Jesse Jackson’s second run for president in 1988; and when the phone rang, the caller might well be “Uncle” Julian Bond or “Aunt” Kathleen Cleaver. The author counts as decisive his education at historically black Morehouse College, where he was “bit by the political bug,” winning his first campaign to become junior class president. Later, he mounted a successful run for election to the state legislature and, in 2014, resigned that seat to run for lieutenant governor. Although his Republican opponent won that race, Sellers garnered a respectable 41% of the vote. “I always tell people that we chipped away at the glass,” he writes. Sellers admits disappointment with the black church for becoming “passive and insular at best at a time when it needs to be younger and more progressive.” He is forthright, as well, about suffering from anxiety, which he attributes to the fear, rage, and anger that result from continued racial oppression. Hostilities, such as the hatred that led to the Mother Emanuel AME church tragedy in Charleston, are endemic. Donald Trump’s election, Sellers asserts, was caused not by economic but cultural fear “that somehow, black and brown people were going to replace whites.”

A strong voice for social justice emerges in an engaging memoir.

Kirkus Reviews