Greyboy

Finding Blackness in a White World

By: Cole Brown, Elaine Welteroth - foreword, Michael Eric Dyson - afterword

Narrated by: Leon Nixon

An honest and courageous examination of what it means to navigate the in-between

Cole has heard it all before - token, bougie, oreo, Blackish - the things we call the kids like him. Black kids who grow up in white spaces, living at an intersection of race and class that many doubt exists. He needed to get far away from the preppy site of his upbringing before he could make sense of it all. Through a series of personal anecdotes and interviews with his peers, Cole transports us to his adolescence and explores what it's like to be young and in search of identity. He digs into the places where, in youth, a greyboy's difference is most acutely felt: parenting, police brutality, Trumpism, depression, and dating, to name a few.

Greyboy: Finding Blackness in a White World asks an important question: What is Blackness? It also provides the answer: Much more than you thought, dammit.

©2020 Cole Brown (P)2020 Tantor

Breathtaking

Feel like a fly on all of the walls. Being a witness of little Cole’s growth until he became the writer and human he is today at times made me tear and at times made me cackle out loud. Not since the times of Isabel Allende, Junot Diaz and Gabriel Garcia Marquez have k been this invested in any story. Bravo. Thank you for giving the brown families and students in independent schools and PW colleges a voice and a way to normalize our bizarre stories.

Experience

Grey boy gives perspective from another's point of view, thus adding to my knowledge of experience.