Having been born the same year as Mychal Denzel Smith - coming of age during the delusional post-Reagan 90s during which nearly everyone tried to teach us that sexism and racism were problems only of the past - I too share Smith's inclination towards borderline obnoxious activism. Part memoir, part political tract, this book is an unprecedented and intimate glimpse into what it means to be young, black, and male in America today-and what it means to be treated as a human in a society dependent on your subjugation.
Chronicling his personal and political education during these tumultuous years, Smith narrates his own coming-of-age story and his struggles to come into his own at a time when too many black men do not survive into adulthood.įrom Barack Obama’s landmark speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 to the recent and widely reported cases of violence against women, from powerful moments of black self-determination like LeBron James’ “decision” to the mobilization of thousands of young black men in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death, Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching documents of how these public milestones have challenged cultural notions of black manhood. Young men of this age have watched as Barack Obama was elected president but have also witnessed the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and so many other young black men killed by police or vigilante violence. I say this more by way of emphasizing the importance of Smith’s project - which demands to be taken seriously - than to detract from it.Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching is an account of how, politically and culturally, the existing script for black manhood has been rewritten for the millennial generation. Given the pressure he wants us to apply to eliminating these negative systems, readers deserve critical practices for accomplishing this, rather than platitudes. Throughout, Smith attempts to speak through hip-hop’s urgent lyricism, draw analytical force from black satire and comedy, improvise on the black literary canon’s rhetorical practices, and emulate the treatises of black feminism and black power. All three, Smith argues throughout, attempt 'to muzzle the radical voices of young black people.' They enforce the kind of paternalistic respectability politics that manages to pander to white supremacy while further demoralizing young black men with unattainable and useless standards. he reserves his most acidic critiques for Hampton administrators, Obama and Smith’s own father. He wants to offer answers 'for the martyrs and tokens, for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting'. Blending memoir and cultural criticism, the book’s form allows Smith to narrate his coming-of-age while interrogating it at the same time.
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