Black Skin, White Masks

by

Paperback, 208 pages

English language

Published March 11, 2020 by Penguin Books, Limited.

ISBN:
978-0-241-39666-7
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4 stars (3 reviews)

Few modern voices have had as profound an impact as Frantz Fanon. A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is an unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world.

Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, it established Fanon as a revolutionary thinker and remains just as relevant and powerful today.

1 edition

reviewed Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

Review of 'Black Skin, White Masks' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Psychotherapist Frantz Fanon analyses the black experience in a white world and exposes the connection between colonialism and mental disease. Based on this work as a psychoanalyst he explores how colonialism 's subjects internalise prejudices, emulating the "white masks" of their oppressors.  Finally shows how the fight for freedom must be combined with building a national culture  and argues that the way ahead is through revolutionary violence, to socialism. 

reviewed Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

Clearly important to read, but a bit high level?

4 stars

I want to be clear: I do not regret reading this book.

But it is a very high-level read. I probably should have found some introductory texts to start with instead.

If nothing else, I totally understand why translating this work into English is so hard, because in the original, Fanon is not using just Standard French, but English and a Creole (I do not know which one, it did not make it clear), as well as the German terminology of past theory.

All things considered, while you should read it in French if you have good enough French, I at least respect the efforts the translator went to.

I should read some more theory / antiracist work and reread this in a year or two. Maybe my rating will change.

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rated it

4 stars

Subjects

  • Black race
  • Blacks, social conditions
  • Race relations
  • Race discrimination