Baratunde Thurston

While How to Be Black is a book of social commentary, it is also a coming of age story for Baratunde Thurston. Through vignettes, readers glimpse the childhood, teenage, college and early corporate years of the author. Thurston spends considerable time relaying memories in the critical formative years of adolescence. “How to Be The Black Friend” opens to a reminder that he was a young adolescent trying to adjust to the world around him. While he describes his memory of realizing he was black in preschool, it is the adolescent years that creates an understanding of what the realization means in an oppressive society.

Thurston, guided by his mother, is involved in a number of activities outside of classroom such as the Ankobia or black education program, karate, swimming lessons, cycling, photography and other activities that creates a well-rounded and confident young man. When on the...