Give audiobooks, support Frugal Bookstore! Start gifting
Bookseller pick
Magically Black and Other Essays by Jerald Walker
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of Frugal Bookstore.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting Frugal Bookstore with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Magically Black and Other Essays

$29.39

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Aaron Goodson

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
Length 3 hours 56 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

In this engaging follow up to How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, the recipient of PEN New England Award for nonfiction and finalist for the National Book Award sharply examines and explains Black life and culture with equal parts candor and humor.

In Magically Black and Other Essays Jerald Walker elegantly blends personal revelation and cultural critique to create a bracing and often humorous examination of Black American life. He thoughtfully addresses the inherent complexities of topics as eclectic as incarceration, home renovations, gentrification, the crip walk, pimping, and the rise of the MAGA movement, approaching them through various Black perspectives, including husband, father, teacher, and writer. The collectionโ€™s overarching theme is captured in the titular essay, which examines the culture of heroic action African Americans created in response to their enslavement and oppression, giving proof to Albert Murrayโ€™s observation that the โ€œfire in the forging process . . . for all its violence, does not destroy the metal that becomes the sword.โ€

Jerald Walker is the author of How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, a Finalist for the National Book Award and Winner of the Massachusetts Book Award; The World in Flames: A Black Boyhood in a White Supremacist Doomsday Cult; and Street Shadows: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Redemption, recipient of the PEN/New England Award for Nonfiction. His work has appeared in prestigious publications such as the Harvard Review, Creative Nonfiction, the Iowa Review, the New York Times, Washington Post, and Mother Jones, as well as six editions of The Best American Essays series and the Pushcart Prizes. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the James A. Michener Foundation, Walker is a Professor of Creative Writing and African American Literature at Emerson College. He lives outside Boston, Massachusetts.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of Frugal Bookstore.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting Frugal Bookstore with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Want the printed book?

Get the print edition from Frugal Bookstore.

Get the print edition

Powered by Bookstore Link

Give audiobooks, support Frugal Bookstore! Start gifting

Frugal Bookstore is proud to partner with Libro.fm to give you a great audiobook experience.