Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend

hardcover, 320 pages

Published April 27, 2021 by Harper.

ISBN:: 978-0-06-306506-2

No rating (1 review)

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a good white person of liberal leanings must be in want of a Black friend.

In the biting, hilarious vein of What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life comes Ben Philippe’s candid memoir-in-essays, chronicling a lifetime of being the Black friend (see also: foreign kid, boyfriend, coworker, student, teacher, roommate, enemy) in predominantly white spaces.

2 editions

Tsundoku reviewed Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend by Ben Philippe

Read Ben Philippe!!! (Pt 2)

No rating

If you've read Ben Phillippe's Young Adult Contemporaries, you probably think of him as "That funny Black Canadian" (Quebecois IIRC)

And this is true. He is very funny. But this is also a gut punch of a memoir. Think of it this way: you probably have some story about someone who wronged you that is hilarious to you, but when you tell it to someone else, you don't get laughs. That is basically this book (Like "that time someone I ghosted called me the N-word")

Do not get me wrong, sometimes it is very funny (even if you are a lily white person like me). But it's a mix of humor and a mix of "Shut up and Listen". And to be clear: I think that's a GOOD thing.

The only reason I bring it up at all is that this book is Ben Philippe's first published foray into the …

If you've read Ben Phillippe's Young Adult Contemporaries, you probably think of him as "That funny Black Canadian" (Quebecois IIRC)

And this is true. He is very funny. But this is also a gut punch of a memoir. Think of it this way: you probably have some story about someone who wronged you that is hilarious to you, but when you tell it to someone else, you don't get laughs. That is basically this book (Like "that time someone I ghosted called me the N-word")

Do not get me wrong, sometimes it is very funny (even if you are a lily white person like me). But it's a mix of humor and a mix of "Shut up and Listen". And to be clear: I think that's a GOOD thing.

The only reason I bring it up at all is that this book is Ben Philippe's first published foray into the Adult market. And it naturally has a different tone than his YA books marketed as "Black Joy"

If it's not clear, this has all the warnings you would expect of a nonfiction book about Black life in North America (short of personal experience of police brutality). I'm not noting it with a CW because I think it's pretty obvious but I want to be clear.

It's an important book, and I recommend reading it.