Book Review: My Vanishing Country: A Memoir by Bakari Sellers-Memoir

Hello dear Readers,

Below my book review of My Vanishing Country: A Memoir by Bakari Sellers.

Title: My Vanishing Country: A Memoir

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Genre: Memoir

Author: Bakari Sellers

Publisher: Amistad
Publication Date: May 19, 2020

Language: English

Hardcover: 240 pages
Meet the Author: Bakari Sellers
Buy Me: Amazon

Book Description

New York Times Bestseller

What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst  and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten black working-class men and women.

Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.

Anchored in in Bakari Seller’s hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, Country illuminates the pride and pain that continues to fertilize the soil of one of the poorest states in the nation. He traces his father’s rise to become, friend of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, a civil rights hero, and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) , to explore the plight of the South's dwindling rural, black working class—many of whom can trace their ancestry back for seven generations.

In his poetic personal history, we are awakened to the crisis affecting the other “Forgotten Men & Women,” who the media seldom acknowledges. For Sellers, these are his family members, neighbors, and friends. He humanizes the struggles that shape their lives: to gain access to healthcare as rural hospitals disappear; to make ends meet as the factories they have relied on shut down and move overseas; to hold on to precious traditions as their towns erode; to forge a path forward without succumbing to despair. 

My Vanishing Country is also a love letter to fatherhood—to Sellers' father, his lodestar, whose life lessons have shaped him, and to his newborn twins, who he hopes will embrace the Sellers family name and honor its legacy.

My Thoughts

Quick to read and interesting memoir. 

Bakari shows a sincere love for his family, and a lot of respect and real care for his State and its people. 

An honest account of his early years as a son, student, and later in life as a father, lawyer, and politician. 

"I want everybody to know that this terrorist did not win. He wanted to invoke terror and fear. But we aren't for that. We are standing up together, arm in arm, or on our knees, with our faces to the rising sun, praying to our Lord and telling him that we will not bow down, but we will stand up." -Bakari Sellers-

Wendy