Mychal Denzel Smith

Praise for Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching:

“This is the book that could have saved so many of our lives.” —Kiese Laymon

“Mychal Denzel Smith answers the pressing but unasked question, what would happen if all those black boys felled by bullets had a chance to make mistakes, read books, fall in love, hone skills, take new paths, and grow up? The story is fully and unflinchingly Mychal’s and because Mychal is so distinctively self-aware, so intellectually invested, and emotionally raw, it cannot simply stand in as a generic tale for all the lost black boys– except that they too would have had stories entirely their own to tell if only they had had a chance to write them. We owe it to them and more importantly to ourselves to read Mychal’s book and render visible what we would rather forget.” —Melissa Harris-Perry

“If I kept a diary of my deepest thoughts, plaguing insecurities and varied triumphs—this would be it. It is a cover to cover conversation with the reader on the complexity of (hopefully) growing to be a Black Man in the American Empire. Mychal’s coming of age book, his first, is a masterful meld of personal reflection, political analysis and honest insight that yearns to be felt, must be read and demands to be seen.”  —umi selah, organizer and co-founder, the dream defenders

About Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching:

How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean.
In “Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching,” Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years, describing his efforts to come into his own in a world that denied his humanity. Smith unapologetically upends reigning assumptions about black masculinity, rewriting the script for black manhood so that depression and anxiety aren t considered taboo, and feminism and LGBTQ rights become part of the fight. The questions Smith asks in this book are urgentfor him, for the martyrs and the tokens, and for the Trayvons that could have been and are still waiting.