Poetic and strong and true. I didn't have any expectations of what this book was before I started reading it. I'm glad that in spite of its fame, I got to listen to it with fresh ears.

This book is a letter from father to son about what it means to be black in America. For sure it's about race, but one thread stuck out to me and I want to pick up on that more: the American Dream continues to survive because of the pilaging of other peoples. And the only way to stop racism and the ilk is by destroying the American Dream.

I have been thinking about that for a while-- the dream cannot be true any longer in the world that we live in. We can't feel nostalgia for the "Europe before all the immigrants." Or the ignorantly blissful suburbia of our past. We need brain drain (in Brazil, at least, it's a product of nothing more than a desire for the American dream) to stop. That will mean society gets leveled out and the advantaged will have less of an advantage... But the route of continuing with the way things are and being angry when we notice that the system is changing just won't cut it any more.