Reviews with content warning for Racial slurs - Black Skin, White Masks

This book walks the line between an academic study of colonialism's effects on the mind and a personal account of those same effects. The personal touch of Fanon to the subject matter enhances it all the more, as if it were not already strengthened by his academic approach. I did feel the book relied perhaps too heavily on external sources, particularly Sartre, which affected its ability to stand on its own, and some aspects felt rather unnecessary to communicate Fanon's analysis. Nevertheless, this 1952 work is an excellent and thorough analysis of the mental brutality of colonialism.

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sarah984's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective slow-paced

3.0

This is mainly interesting as a foundational text to look at later writers. The idea that a Black child in a primarily Black space reads European books and sees himself in the white hero, only "becoming" Black after travelling to Europe and being seen as such there, as well as the ways racial hierarchies are artificially constructed are articulated in a compelling way, but the content is so dense (there is a lot of random poetry analysis) or dated (Freudian analysis, misogyny, homophobia) that it's hard to recommend to a "lay" reader.

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