The Grey Album: On the Blackness of Blackness

*Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism**A "Publishers Weekly" Top 10 Literary Criticism and Essays Pick for Spring 2012*"The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize"Taking its title from Dan [...]
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*Finalist for the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism**A "Publishers Weekly" Top 10 Literary Criticism and Essays Pick for Spring 2012*"The Grey Album, the first work of prose by the brilliant poet Kevin Young, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize"Taking its title from Danger Mouse's pioneering mashup of Jay-Z's "The Black Album "and the Beatles' "The White Album," Kevin Young's encyclopedic book combines essay, cultural criticism, and lyrical choruses to illustrate the African American tradition of lying--storytelling, telling tales, fibbing, improvising, "jazzing." What emerges is a persuasive argument for the many ways that African American culture "is "American culture, and for the centrality of art--and artfulness--to our daily life. Moving from gospel to soul, funk to freestyle, Young sifts through the shadows, the bootleg, the remix, the grey areas of our history, literature, and music.