New York Times Bestseller
What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN
analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina
history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book
that illuminates the lives of America's forgotten black working-class
men and women.
Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing
Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present,
and future.
Anchored in in Bakari Seller's hometown of Denmark, South Carolina,
Country illuminates the pride and pain that continues to fertilize the
soil of one of the poorest states in the nation. He traces his father's
rise to become, friend of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King, a
civil rights hero, and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating
Committee (SNCC), to explore the plight of the South's dwindling rural,
black working class--many of whom can trace their ancestry back for
seven generations.
In his poetic personal history, we are awakened to the crisis affecting
the other "Forgotten Men & Women," who the media seldom acknowledges.
For Sellers, these are his family members, neighbors, and friends. He
humanizes the struggles that shape their lives: to gain access to
healthcare as rural hospitals disappear; to make ends meet as the
factories they have relied on shut down and move overseas; to hold on to
precious traditions as their towns erode; to forge a path forward
without succumbing to despair.
My Vanishing Country is also a love letter to fatherhood--to Sellers'
father, his lodestar, whose life lessons have shaped him, and to his
newborn twins, who he hopes will embrace the Sellers family name and
honor its legacy.
