Tears we cannot stop : a sermon to white America / Michael Eric Dyson.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, INDIEBOUND, LOS ANGELES TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, CHRONICLE HERALD, SALISBURY POST, GUELPH MERCURY TRIBUNE, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER | NAMED A BEST/MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2017 BY: The Washington Post * Bustle * Men's Journal * The Chicago Reader * StarTribune * Blavity * The Guardian * NBC New York's Bill's Books * Kirkus * Essence

"One of the most frank and searing discussions on race ... a deeply serious, urgent book, which should take its place in the tradition of Baldwin's The Fire Next Time and King's Why We Can't Wait ." -- The New York Times Book Review

Toni Morrison hails Tears We Cannot Stop as "Elegantly written and powerful in several areas: moving personal recollections; profound cultural analysis; and guidance for moral redemption. A work to relish."

Stephen King says: "Here's a sermon that's as fierce as it is lucid...If you're black, you'll feel a spark of recognition in every paragraph. If you're white, Dyson tells you what you need to know--what this white man needed to know, at least. This is a major achievement. I read it and said amen."

Short, emotional, literary, powerful-- Tears We Cannot Stop is the book that all Americans who care about the current and long-burning crisis in race relations will want to read.

As the country grapples with racist division at a level not seen since the 1960s, one man's voice soars above the rest with conviction and compassion. In his 2016 New York Times op-ed piece "Death in Black and White," Michael Eric Dyson moved a nation. Now he continues to speak out in Tears We Cannot Stop-- a provocative and deeply personal call for change. Dyson argues that if we are to make real racial progress we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.

"The time is at hand for reckoning with the past, recognizing the truth of the present, and moving together to redeem the nation for our future. If we don't act now, if you don't address race immediately, there very well may be no future."

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• I Call to Worship (p. 1)
• II Hymns of Praise (p. 9)
• III Invocation (p. 19)
• IV Scripture Reading (p. 35)
• V Sermon (p. 41)
• Repenting of Whiteness (p. 43)
• 1 Inventing Whiteness (p. 44)
• 2 The Five Stages of White Grief (p. 71)
• 3 The Plague of White Innocence (p. 95)
• Being Black in America (p. 125)
• 4 Nigger (p. 126)
• 5 Our Own Worst Enemy? (p. 143)
• 6 Coptopia (p. 170)
• VI Benediction (p. 195)
• VII Offering Plate (p. 213)
• VIII Prelude to Service (p. 217)
• IX Closing Prayer (p. 225)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Activist, critic, scholar, and ordained Baptist minister Dyson (sociology, Georgetown Univ.; The Black Presidency) religiously lays out an order of service in hope of inspiring repentance, redemption, and reparation in a racially troubled America. Opening with a call to worship and closing with a prayer, his nine-chapter work with a central six-part sermon pleads for America to find its moral and spiritual foundations. Dyson traces the historical invention and social inheritance of whiteness, and how it has led America to ignore, discount, and dismiss black grievances. In order to make racial progress, Dyson passionately urges all Americans to reject racial revisionism and face difficult truths in addressing the disorder he labels Chronic -Historical -Evasion and Trickery, or CHEAT. This work is both lucid in its logic and profound in its probing and wide-ranging cultural and social analysis. Dyson's homily resonates amid personal recollection and reflection as a call to action for Americans to reach a positive future by working to cultivate empathy, develop racial literacy, and live up to the demands of justice. -VERDICT A must-read for Americans who hope for a brighter day to emerge from the anguished hopelessness created by white idolatry and willful ignorance.-Thomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Booklist Review

In his latest, commentator and writer Dyson (The Black Presidency, 2016) preaches a message that he admits will be hard for most white Americans to hear, let alone internalize and accept: white folks are complicit in societal attitudes toward African Americans, and our future progress as a nation is dependent on a new mindset. Dyson lays bare our conscience, then offers redemption through our potential to change. Dyson beseeches readers to fully and compassionately embrace the struggles of black Americans citizens of a country rooted in the sin of slavery and poisoned by racism. He offers poignant, personal examples of injustices brought by a society suspicious of himself and others of color. He covers a wide range of topics, including policing tragedies, the lack of African Americans in mainstream American history, the willful ignorance of whites, patriotism versus nationalism, the power of language, and the future of race relations under President Trump. With a reading list to encourage further learning, Dyson offers an intellectual framework for everyone to adopt in order to understand and embrace each other's struggles to be united.--Kaplan, Dan Copyright 2017 Booklist