Goedert's book is worth reading. It is an excellent resource for scholars, researchers, and practitioners concerned with the mental health of urban Black men. Graduate and undergraduate students will find this book valuable as they navigate through their academic journey. The author's intention is to shed light on the stories that often go unseen ... and are blatantly ignored by the mainstream (p. 4); this book does that. * Educational Review *
Mead Goedert's in-depth interviews of five African-American upwardly mobile men breathe life and vitality into what are typically surface-level sociological studies of this remarkable demographic. Goedert lets Rico, Rusty, Bobby, Silas, and Marcus describe, in their own words, the challenges that racist structures and attitudes incessantly present to their capacity to sustain their remarkably positive sense of self. Then, respectfully, he draws out the psychological implications of these challenges, examining, among other topics, their need to deny any sense of vulnerability, the way they handle white projections of aggression, and the way they split themselves in two in order to feel a sense of belonging in the disparate worlds they inhabit. Goedert's ease with his interviewees allowed this white reader to feel a sense of connection with these men's experiences that are only otherwise available while encountering works of art. -- Lynne Layton, Harvard Medical School
This is a well-researched and thought-provoking work. It delves in sensitive but illuminating ways into the subjective world of African-American young men. I found the book most instructive and helpful to my own work in this area. -- C. Jama Adams, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Mr. Goedert has taken on the monumental task of exploring a people that are socially considered without redemption or, in Fanon's terms, 'the Wretched of the Earth.' And he has done an outstanding job of it. Although scholarly research on lower-class Black men remains in the infancy stage, the psychoanalytic study of these men is almost nonexistent. Mr. Goedert's work is exemplary for both as he so thoroughly documents the external and internal struggles of these men through a psychoanalytic lens; he validates both. This book is a must-read for mental health clinicians treating lower-class Black men or members of their families, as well as those in the social services. -- Kirkland C. Vaughans, Derner Institute of Advanced Psychological Studies and founding editor of the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy
