2024 the best body in the world female review

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“Blackness is an art, not a science. It is a paradox: intangible and visceral; a situation and a story. It is the thread that connects these essays, but its significance as an experience emerges randomly, unpredictably. . . . Race is the story of my life, and therefore black is the body of this book.” 

In these twelve deeply personal, connected essays, Bernard details the experience of growing up black in the south with a family name inherited from a white man, surviving a random stabbing at a New Haven coffee shop, marrying a white man from the North and bringing him home to her family, adopting two children from Ethiopia, and living and teaching in a primarily white New England college town. Each of these essays sets out to discover a new way of talking about race and of telling the truth as the author has lived it. 

"Black Is the Body is one of the most beautiful, elegant memoirs I've ever read. It's about race, it's about womanhood, it's about friendship, it's about a life of the mind, and also a life of the body. But more than anything, it's about love. I can't praise Emily Bernard enough for what she has created in these pages." --Elizabeth Gilbert

WINNER OF THE CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL PROSE

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND KIRKUS REVIEWS

ONE OF MAUREEN CORRIGAN'S 10 UNPUTDOWNABLE READS OF THE YEAR

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Vintage; Reprint edition (December 3, 2019)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1101972416
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1101972410
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.22 x 0.66 x 7.96 inches
Reviewer: Cyndal S.
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Amazing Read! Highly Recommend!
Review: Not only is this book a collection of essays/stories about resilience, self discovery, strength, vulnerability, and empowerment ... it’s also one of the greatest love stories I have ever read.This book is about forgiving and loving yourself at all costs, finding yourself in the face of adversity, loving your family and your history, and loving and trusting your spouse will be there for you even when you can’t be there for yourself!Read this on a good day, on a bad day, when you need a pick me up, or when you need to pick someone else up. These stories are raw, they are real, and they are a tale of women everywhere.

Reviewer: Mary Pyle
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: I absolutely loved Black Is the Body
Review: This book was so good. To me it is a book about love. The kind you have for someone who is telling you about their life. The way Emily Bernard writes is stunningly beautiful. I did have to look up a few words along the way. That was fine though because each one was perfectly placed. I found myself re-reading some paragraphs. Not because it was overly complex. I just wanted to read how she conveys her story in such a heartfelt artistic way.

Reviewer: Ruth M. Brandon
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: challenges of living between cultures
Review: I bought this as a gift but read it myself first - many details of the challenges and joys of living in mixed race and cross-cultural reality, are the content of stories and essays and memoir as the author continually readjusts her own felt identity. Grandparents in Mississippi, parents in Tennessee, husband white, daughter Ethiopian, living in mostly white Vermont as a professor. It was interesting but it felt slow to me. It might not be slow for others who live with the same challenges.

Reviewer: Charissa N. Terranova
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A page-turner -- full of empathy, love, and insight
Review: Bernard's Black Is the Body is a page-turner and more precisely a triumph of the ambiguity of race -- how the cultural construct is fraught with violence, love, desire, and friendship...that it is powerfully molded by culture but not science The essays in this book follow from her random stabbing in the gut by a wacko in a coffee shop in New Haven where she was a grad student at Yale in the 1990s, to her marriage to an Italian American scholar of African American Studies, to their adoption of Ethiopian twins, to their life in Vermont as professors of African American Literature --- all while looping back in time to her childhood in Nashville and family visits to Mississippi. This book will make you feel warm and happy -- full of love and hope and reality all at once. You will laugh and tear up...

Reviewer: Book lover
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Opened my eyes to a different reality
Review: This is a beautifully written personal story of what it is like living in an essentially white community as a black woman. It is a gripping story; surprisingly a page turner. I highly recommend it to anyone trying to understand what it is like be other than white Anglo-Saxon in New England.

Reviewer: Eleanor DesPrez
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: "Hope is something we practice"
Review: Each essay in this exquisitely crafted collection is deeply rewarding to read on its own; taken together, these 12 essays, each one as generous-hearted as it is tough-minded, render a seeker's life-in-progress. Bernard trains an unflinching eye on the complexities of her own experience as a woman, an African American, a parent, spouse, friend, and daughter. In a recent interview, she said, "I believe hope is something we practice." One force she clearly places hope in is honest, vulnerable interpersonal connection--between self and other, and between writer and reader. Reading her stories helps me practice that hope, too.

Reviewer: Afrika Owes
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Black may be the body but Africa ain't in my soul
Review: I was shocked reading that the author stated "She never experienced the connection to Africa" spoken of by Langston Hughes. She was on a trip to Ethiopia. She futher states that she was not ashamed for connecting with the white parents in the airport and alienated by the "back to Africa" group happened to encounter. She speaks respectfully of her grandmother's passing in Mississippi. She states that her grandmother"cared less about Africa." It is interesting that her African adopted daughters never realized their "blackness" until they were 6 watching a show on television. Imagine this from parents who are professors of African history. The stories are told with intent and honesty. It takes a lot of courage to speak your truth. Thanks for keeping it real and shedding a little light on convictions of those teaching the next generation African American history. Incredible.

Reviewer: kiddiefondue
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Beautifully written. A must read for all races.
Review: Excellent and engaging story. A great insight into an African American woman’s thoughts and experiences with race topics and issues. So many nuances are addressed with how black people feel and think about words, thoughts and attitudes put forth by non-black people. I love how Emily tells the story of when her children became “black” when they had always been brown, when they learned about racism and slavery. Until that time they were brown, but after learning of the shame and hate that should all be past us they became “black.” A beautiful eye opener for people interested in understanding our brothers and sisters from Africa better.

Reviewer: marsha
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: I am a slow reader without a lot of chances to read, but I raced through this book. I snuck in a page or a paragraph at any opportunity. The way Emily Bernard writes feels like a hug even when the content is thorny and difficult. I am so sad that I am at the end now, but excited to read more of her work!

Reviewer: Lucía
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: 📝«La negrura es un arte, no una ciencia. Es una paradoja: intangible y visceral; una situación y una historia. Es el hilo conductor que conecta estos ensayos, pero su importancia como experiencia surge de manera aleatoria, impredecible ... La raza es La historia de mi vida, y por lo tanto el negro es el cuerpo de este libro.»La autora comienza este conjunto de doce ensayos con la experiencia que sufrió cuando fue apuñalada, que, curiosamente, no tuvo nada que ver con ser negra, pero que le dejaría secuelas para siempre. De ahí nos lleva a cómo es vivir en una ciudad con la mayoría de habitantes blancos donde ser negra inevitablemente sobresale. Nos habla de su trabajo dando clases en la universidad y poniendo ante las cuerdas a sus alumnos al intentar hacerles decir la palabra “nigger”.Bernard detalla la experiencia de crecer siendo negra en el Sur con un apellido heredado de un hombre blanco. Desde ahí nos transporta en la historia a diferentes sucesos que han pasado a lo largo de los años en su familia y conocidos donde han sido víctimas de acoso, persecuciones, malos tratos y asesinatos.La última parte la dedica a su vida familiar, como se casó con un hombre blanco y juntos adoptaron a sus hijas de Etiopía. Nos narra todo el proceso y a la vez lo que implica ser una pareja interracial. Igualmente habla de cómo afronta la educación de sus dos niñas siendo negras en un país de blancos y los obstáculos que se va encontrando por el camino.En resumen, un libro muy interesante y con una prosa ligera, pero que a mi se me quedó un poquito escueto a la hora de hablar del acoso hacia los afroamericanos en EEUU. Entiendo que es una experiencia personal, pero me hubiese gustado un poco más de historia. Sin duda el libro sigue siendo muy recomendable.👉Súper consejo: El audiolibro está narrado por la autora y eso siempre es un plus, por los menos en las autobiografías.

Reviewer: Mary
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Pour lire! Je l'ame beaucoup.