“I refuse to let people take away my hope. I refuse to let people take away my faith. We have made a lot of progress, but we still have so far to go. And I want to live in a country where my kids can be free.” “My Vanishing Country: A Memoir” by Bakari Sellers is published by Amistad/HarperCollins. 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 in Bakari Seller’s hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, Country illuminates the pride and pain that continues to fertilize the soil of one of the poorest states in the nation.
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 in Bakari Seller's hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, Country illuminates the pride and pain that continues to fertilize the soil of one of the poorest states in the nation. Well, he has his memoir out; it’s called My Vanishing Country. And one of the central moments in the book is the Orangeburg massacre of 1968, one of the most violent, least remembered events of the. One of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history, Bakari Sellers brings readers this important book that illuminates the lives of America’.
Overview
New York Times BestsellerWhat J. Virtual dj. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten black working-class men and women.
Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.
Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.
My Vanishing Country Summary
Anchored in in Bakari Seller’s hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, 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, friend of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, a civil rights hero, and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) , to explore 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 & Women,” who the media seldom acknowledges. 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.
When I arrived at Morehouse College, I was only sixteen years old, but no one guessed my age because I was six-foot-five and some change. I arrived with Hercules, my four-foot-long ball python, which probably should have been a dead giveaway, but my age was a kept a secret, at least until my mother sent a huge bouquet of balloons to the dorm months later that said “Happy 17th Birthday.” I was mortified, to say the least.
My Vanishing Country
Although pets were prohibited on campus, Hercules lived in my dorm room without Michael, the residential director, ever finding out—maybe because Michael wasn’t around much since he was newly married. Michael treated us like grown men, having only one rule: don’t disrespect me and make me write you up.
My Vanishing Country
Jarrod and I moved into Room 122 in the honors dorm called Graves Hall. It was one of those old-school college dorms with one twin bed to the right and another to the left. I had my snake, and Jarrod had his television. We were the only boys from Orangeburg at the time, two among a group of people labeled “country.