My Vanishing Country: A Memoir
Written and Narrated By: Bakari Sellers
Length: 5 hrs and 9 mins
A look at Black working class rural America? I think not. A look at Bakari being an ambitious bit of a buffoon? Oh totally…
Speaking of buffoons, I must admit to being a bit of one here. I… >gasp< … read the danged Publisher’s Summary for My Vanishing Country. And I was totally swayed by it likening this audiobook to JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy. What could be more powerful than the Black take on the working class trying to make do in the rural South?
Uhm… How about an audiobook that ACTUALLY IS about the Black working class in the rural South? Uhm, yesssss! Write a book about that someday, Mr. Sellers! Please dooooo!
Cuz this book ain’t it. Oh, sure, it brieeeeeefly touches on the experiences of the working poor in Denmark, South Carolina, but mostly this is about how verrrrry proud Bakari is to be Bakari, son of a 60’s Civil Rights Era activist who also knew the luminaries of the day. Oh, yessss. You’ll get PLENty of dropped names that Bakari rubbed shoulders with as a mere boy, PLENty of those who remained familiar when he was older.
But, aside from a friendship with a boy soon-to-be grown man who went by the name of Pops, Bakari really has barely an inkling of what all happened on the other side of the tracks. You see, Bakari lived on the right side of ‘em, sparing him the drugs, the violence, the hopelessness. He THINKS he knows all about it cuz he lived so close to it, but he doesn’t really. Yes, he grew into the systemic racism, but no, unlike Pops who made poor choices based on poverty and hopelessness, Bakari always was the favored son and was looked after and held dear.
I wish there’d been more about that sense of family, and Bakari DOES go into his father’s past, but really. The whole of the book is about Bakari jockeying into positions for political power. Awesome that he was so young when a campaign was successful; not so awesome when he threw that position away cuz he was looking for a greater prize and rather blew off his current constituents.
If you wanna learn how campaigns are run, this audiobook is for you. You’ll learn about studying demographics, about knocking on doors being a MUST for the first-time candidate, you’ll hear about the efficacy of various strategies. You’ll also hear about favors being called in and about the name of Sellers holding political weight given his father’s activism. Bakari has noooo problem in dropping names to get him places, and when he loses, it’s to activist titans that he calls for the uplifting words.
Plus you’ll hear a whole LOT about him weeping and crying at the drop of a hat. He brushes on a childhood incident where he threw himself to the ground and stayed there, kicking and screaming and blubbering about how a game was lost. And he pretty much grew into that kind of a man. I think it’s really quite all right when modern men are in touch with their emotions and are fearless when expressing them. And there are times when Bakari is wholly justified on a couple of occasions for the deluge of tears (The church shootings, his wife’s difficult and almost deadly post-labor complications), but DUDE! Oh. My. Freakin’ Gosh! Get a grip. Pretty much everything is a Good Reason for a Cry.
Nope, the most interesting person in this memoir is Pops and his story. Cuz even after the man starts making good choices, gets himself back to further his education, puts himself out there? There’s NOTHING for him. Bakari does tell us how hard it is to find employment once you’ve got a record, especially if you’re Black. But then he just kinda winds down on how Pops felt betrayed by hope, how he felt betrayed by Bakari and his family. Thaaaaaat kinda gets glossed over as Bakari dashes off to his next campaign, his next ambition. There’s little in the way of real empathy for Pops because there appears to be little in the way of experience of his childhood friend’s early life, that Pops sought the family out for a sense of peace, and warmth, and love.
Not much in the way of compassion though as they all go on to become standouts in their chosen fields.
I get it; you can’t let people weigh you down, right?
It’s just that, if you’re going to go on and write a book about those people? It might be good not to step on them also…
Just saying…
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