Here for it or, how to save your soul in America: essays

"R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns...

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Main Author: Thomas, R. Eric (Author)
Format: Books Print Book
Language: English
Published: New York : Ballantine Books, [2020]
Edition: First edition.
Subjects:
Summary: "R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood: the barren urban landscape where his parents' house was an anomalous bright spot, and the verdant school they sent him to in white suburbia. He writes about struggling to reconcile his Christian identity with his sexuality, about the exhaustion of code-switching in college, accidentally getting famous on the internet (for the wrong reason), and the surreal experience of covering the 2016 election as well as the seismic change that came thereafter. Ultimately, Eric seeks the answer to the ever more relevant question: Is the future worth it? Why do we bother when everything seems to be getting worse? As the world continues to shift in unpredictable ways, Eric finds the answers to these questions by re-envisioning what "normal" means, and in the powerful alchemy that occurs when you at last place yourself at the center of your own story"--
Physical Description: xviii, 264 pages ; 22 cm
ISBN: 9780525621034
0525621032
Author Notes: R. Eric Thomas is a bestselling author, playwright, and screenwriter. His books include Here for It: Or, How to Save Your Soul in America, which was featured as a Read with Jenna Book Club Pick on NBC's Today, and Reclaiming Her Time: The Power of Maxine Waters , co-authored with Helena Andrews-Dyer. For four years, he wrote "Eric Reads the News," a wildly popular daily humor column covering pop culture and politics for Elle online. Eric is the winner of the Barrymore Award for Best New Play and the Dramatist Guild Lanford Wilson Award, and was a finalist for the Steinberg/ATCA New Play Award. He has written for the Peabody Award-winning streaming series Dickinson and Better Things on FX. Off the page, Eric is also the long-running host of The Moth StorySlams in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., and has been heard multiple times on The Moth Radio Hour, NPR's All Things Considered, and It's Been A Minute with Sam Sanders . He lives in Maryland with his extraordinary husband, the Reverend David Norse Thomas.