In the 16 essays that make up the book, Young pulls readers into his world, showing them his vulnerability, hitting them with unflinching honesty about the state of race relations in this country, and keeping them glued to the pages with his wit and humor. While this is presented as a memoir in essays, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker is more of a personal collection of independent essays that offer a look at the life of one man. It is also a collection that serves as an authentic, keen, and touching example of the black male experience. Reading Young's essays is often an uncomfortable experience because he doesn't shy away from ugly truths. There is a lot of funny writing here, but also pain, insecurity, loss, and injustice ... The beauty of What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker is that Young never tries to make it easy for readers. He shows his righteous anger. He presents inequality. And he uses the N-word ... There are two somewhat meandering essays at the end of the book that could have used a stronger edit, but that aside, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker is an outstanding collection of nonfiction that encapsulates the black male experience — and demands change. Young is a talented writer and sharp cultural critic. He created something special with this timely and powerful book. It, like the work of bell hooks and Roxane Gay, should be required reading.

In this memoir in essays, we learn about Young through 16 pieces that are ostensibly about something else ... Readers who know Young’s work from the blog he co-founded, Very Smart Brothas, will recognize his voice, his fondness for lists, his precise, comprehensive and spectacular references to pop culture, his wit and his keen mind ... If Young were a soul-food restaurant and What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker were his current menu, not every dish would succeed. Some essays fail to showcase Young’s loftiest ideas, and the book gets off to a slow start. Still, the overall menu is outstanding ... the kind of offering that’s so good even those of us who frequented the joint before word got out will end up hoping this chef will get his due and the line to see what he’ll cook up next will stretch around the block.

A passionate, wryly bittersweet tribute to Black life in majority-white Pittsburgh ... [Young's] barbed riffs on gentrification, Black barber shops, basketball, appropriate use of the word 'nigga,' and the obtuseness of white privilege are sharply observed ... A must read.

A fascinating exploration of how race, class and gender, inform notions of black identity in American life. It is a story about the range of experiences that comprise black culture in Pittsburgh, reflected in the broader narrative of what it is like to be black in America. It is to internalize certain amounts of angst, fear and neuroses that can at times seem so absurd to the point of being comical, if not heartbreaking ... in equal parts a deeply introspective account of a life and an astute critique of the contours along which black people survive the limitations of historic and systemic racism. This unfolds in honest, raw and colorful observations that reflect a spectrum of experiences ... Readers who may be unfamiliar with Mr. Young’s writing may flinch or struggle with certain colloquialisms and terms, yet the book is filled with laugh-out-loud descriptions in beautifully constructed and bold throw-away lines ... is ultimately about overcoming the many ways in which racism in America dehumanizes the soul. To overcome it, we must find our humanity through forgiveness and loving ourselves — our blackness.

Young’s reflections on hyper-masculinity and on gender in general are not without their fraught moments ... What remains most memorable about Young’s work is his ability to access and inhabit his consciousness at different stages of his life, without projecting his present outlook on the younger iterations of himself. Young succeeds at creating a clear distinction between the narrative voice that has already lived through these various joys and trials and his less experienced voice navigating the usual awkwardness of youth alongside the realities of growing up as a black boy in Pittsburgh in the 1980s and ’90s. Above all, his writing is hilarious, as in laughing so hard that you end up in tears or, sometimes, laughing hard enough to stop the tears from flowing.

What makes this memoir so refreshing and unique is the humor [Young] infuses into the precarious state of being black in America ... By offering himself up as the punching bag, Young defuses just enough tension to tackle difficult issues of race and identity. Rather than accusing his readers of being brutes, he leans close to them and hooks a thumb back at his former, less-enlightened self, saying, Look at that guy. Can you believe him? He had some growing up to do, didn’t he? ... At times, it’s easy to forget that this is a memoir because larger societal issues are consistently intertwined in his reflections ... The bottom line: Young’s keen humor and humility make for a smart, engaging, funny, and thought-provoking read.

Darkly hilarious and forthcoming essays ... Young uses pop culture references and personal stories to look at a life molded by structural racism, the joy of having a family that holds together in a crisis, and the thrill of succeeding against difficult odds. Young’s charm and wit make these essays a pleasure to read; his candid approach makes them memorable.