This wasn't quite what I expected, and I liked that about it. The author doesn't take himself too seriously, but also gives solid advice and questions to consider. I really liked the format with the scenarios, questions, quizzes, and truth or bullshit for each topic.

I hadn't known until then that my condition could be thought costly if it meant men of science must confess their limitations.

This book, whew! Bethany C. Morrow brilliantly weaves the story of Dolores Extract No. 1 (aka Elsie) together with questions of humanity and how our memories and traumas make us the people that we are. Elsie's existence and her persistence and capability for growth causes people in this early 20th century setting to question what makes one memory different or more powerful than another. The story is so beautifully written, and gently takes us through these huge questions, in a way that I've not seen an author do before. Everyone should read this one. So so good.

All these words from the seller, but not one word from the sold.
-Zora Neale Hurston

I don't think I can ever find the right words to describe this. Go read it. Remind yourself constantly that it is not fiction, but a first person account of a man's life. Embrace the complexity of his story and the way it challenges simplistic narratives about slavery and blackness and American society and culture.

I'll leave you with this quote from the editor's afterword: "If we view Barracoon as just another brilliant example of Hurston's anthropological genius, we are gravely mistaken and we do not fathom the full import of her objectives as a social scientist...The body of lore Hurston gathered was an argument against such notions of cultural inferiority and white supremacy, and it defied the idea of European cultural hegemony as it also questioned the narrative of white nationalism."