Summary

As Resmaa Menakem opens Chapter 1 entitled "Your Body and Blood," he travels back to the times he watched television with his grandmother when he was a small boy. His grandmother often asked him to rub her hands because they hurt. One day, Menakem asked about this pain: "Grandma, why are your hands like that? They ain't the same as mine" (4). His grandmother explained that her thick and calloused hands were the result of picking cotton since the age of four. She explained that the cotton plant has sharp burrs in it that will cut up small hands. Her hands simply remained bloody and torn up until her skin thickened and formed a protective callous.

In the wake of the image of a four-year-old's bloody hands, Menakem pivots to the present-day pain of racism that endures in spite of...