HACKER Q&A
📣 II-V-I

Books that transport you into a different time, place, or skin


I recently finished If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin and was very much engrossed in the narrative, the time period, and the lives of the characters, all of which are much different than who I am and how and where I've lived.

What are some other (preferably fiction) books that'll do the same?


  👤 mindcrime Accepted Answer ✓
As a white guy, who was born white, and will always be white, it's obviously hard for me to fully appreciate many aspects of the daily life of, say, a black man, or a black woman, or a white woman, or a hispanic man, etc. And while that will always be true, there are things I can do to try to gain perspective. I can talk to my friends who are black, hispanic, etc., I can talk to my female friends about gender issues and so on.

But one other thing I found, is that there is fiction I can read, which is written by members of these communities and which illustrate details of their respective worlds. For example, there are many books which are specifically about the lives of black people in an inner city setting. I expect the same is true of other specific communities and groups.

With that in mind, I started reading an author named Donald Goines[1] who wrote what we generally call "urban fiction." So far I've only read one of his books, specifically Whoreson[2]. And I have to say, it was somewhat eye opening. Relative to my life and upbringing in a rural part of NC, the characters and their lives in this book were something very different from my own experiences. Of course it's important to keep in mind that it is fiction, but I still feel like reading this book was useful for learning to look at things from a different perspective. And it was a good book its own right. I wouldn't say that reading it was purely a didactic exercise. And I do plan to read more of Goines' books. I have two or three on my shelf waiting now.

Another interesting book that I've started, but not yet finished, is titled Black Like Me[3]. It's non-fiction, but radically interesting. It's about how a white man from Texas had his skin artificially darkened back in the late 1950's and spent a lot of time during the era of racial segregation, travelling in the Deep South, disguised as a black man and living the life of a black man. Based on the chunk I've read so far, I highly recommend it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Goines

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoreson_(novel)

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Like_Me