Review of the Day: The Awkward Black Man

I first heard Walter Mosley do an interview with Michael Silverblatt on the (now defunct) radio program Bookworm in October 2020. Because there are just so many great books, I did not start reading the book until now. These are stories about Black men who are not particularly heroic — they are afraid of commitment, they are socially awkward, a bit odd, or just a little odd — in other words, they represent the experience of many Black men in the real world.

To give one example of what to expect when reading, here is a section from a story called An Unlikely Series of Conversations. This is a story about a man who works as a bank teller in Manhattan who prides himself on his original thinking, despite the fact that it often leads him into trouble.

“You called me African-American, and I don’t answer to that description. People who come from another country to this one use the hyphenate name. You know, Italians who came over a generation or two back calling themselves Italian-Americans. Maybe they kept up contact with home or followed cultural norms that are particularly Italian. But a man like me, a man whose ancestors were kidnapped, chained, and dragged over here centuries ago is not, cannot be, a hyphenate. At least not the kind of hyphenate that you say. You might call me an Abductee-American, an originally Unwilling-American. You might say that I’m a partly Disenfranchised American. But African-American? I mean, even if my mama was from Guinea, you’d do better to call me a Guinean rather than an African-American. Africa is a continent, not a country, not even one race. You don’t use the term White-American because that has no cultural basis; even saying Euro-Americans makes very little sense” (p. 308-9).

 The stories in The Awkward Black Man are, at least in my opinion, a joy to read.

kindle and Audible audiobook. 269 pgs. 19 February 2026.