What Truth Sounds Like examines the events surrounding the 1963 meeting between Robert F. Kennedy and James Baldwin in New York City, as well as its impact on race relations in the United States from then to now.
In this short and passionately written book, What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America, the prolific scholar and commentator Michael Eric Dyson revisits a turning point in Kennedy’s moral and intellectual odyssey on the issue of race ... When it comes to artists (and athletes), Dyson invokes a sometimes dizzying array of pop-culture stars and phenomena, from Jay-Z and Beyoncé, to LeBron James and Colin Kaepernick, to Hamilton and Black Panther. But where he is most illuminating and provocative is in discussing figures like himself: black public intellectuals.
Dyson continues his illumination of complex issues of race in his latest compelling book ... After providing the backstories and historical context of the participants, Dyson offers contemporary examples of public figures who struggle for equality. The result is a moving ode to the potentiality of American social progress.
...a piercing and wide-ranging analysis of American race relations ... Dyson rounds out the book by bringing contemporary cultural touchstones into the discussion, among them Jay-Z, Beyoncé, the film Get Out, Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Black Lives Matter. This is a poignant take on still-festering racial tensions in the United States.
