Black Like Me Review

Title of the Book: Black Like Me
Author: John Howard Griffin
Number of Pages: 208
Rating: ✩✩✩✩✩

    Black Like Me is a chilling story about racial injustice that continues to be a timeless work of art. The book tells the story of the author, John Howard Griffin, a journalist who uses medication to darken his skin from white to black to see the 1950s Deep South from the other side of the color line. He does not change his name or anything else, only his skin color, to see if anyone still recognizes him. When the medical treatment is complete, John goes out into New Orleans and immediately sees the jarring difference between his old life as a white man and his new life as a black man.
    This book is unique because it shows commonly-known things about the civil rights era from a firsthand perspective never seen before. Over the course of the experiment, John got every ounce of the black experience. Finding a job was out of the question no matter how hard he tried, harassment from whites was routine, even getting something to drink was a difficult task. His lifestyle completely flipped from an average, perhaps above-average living standard, to eating raccoon meat with rice just to have a meal. The story gives a fresh look at the true effects of racism in society, and holds nothing back from the reader.
    The more memorable moments in the story take place when John starts switching between black and white to get a feel for just how different his two lives really are. At first, switching back to white acts as a relief from the constant pressure of his life as a black man, but over time he becomes more and more conflicted. On one hand, he gets to resume his normal life and regain his freedom, but on the other hand, he feels that he no longer knows the black experience, and is no longer a part of the closely-knit black community that did so much for him. In addition, switching between races made John learn a lot about race relations and how little blacks and whites really know about each other.
    I would recommend this to anyone interested in the American civil rights era, as it is an excellent story about prejudice and race with lots of reflection from the author on how and why things came to be and were that way at the time, and how they could change. You may not be able to get through it easily, and that's fine. Black Like Me may be jarring, but it is important, and continues to serve as a window into a very different society.