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The True Cost of Black Life in America
by Trymaine Lee
A deeply personal exploration of the generational impact of guns on the Black experience in America.
A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, nearly died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter, Nola, asked her daddy why, he realized that to answer her honestly, he had to confront what almost killed him―the weight of being a Black man in America; of bearing witness, as a journalist, to relentless Black death; and of a family history scarred by enslavement, lynching, the Great Migration, the also insidious racism of the North, and gun violence that stole the lives of two great-uncles, a grandfather, a stepbrother, and two cousins.
In this powerful narrative, Lee weaves three strands: the long and bloody history of African Americans and guns; his work as a chronicler of gun violence, tallying the costs and riches generated by both the legal and illegal gun industries; and his own life story― from almost being caught up in gun violence as a young man, to exploring the legacy of the Middle Passage in Ghana through his ancestors' footsteps, and navigating the challenges of representing his people accurately in an overwhelmingly white and often hostile media world, and most importantly, to celebrating the enduring strength of his family and community.
In A Thousand Ways to Die, Lee answers Nola and all who seek a more just America. He shares the hard truths and complexities of the Black experience, but he also celebrates the beauty and resilience that is Nola's legacy.
"A stunning, powerful testament of survival and love." —BookPage (starred review)
"A provocative and informative read that expertly blends memoir with hard-hitting reporting." —Kirkus Reviews
"A Thousand Ways to Die is a trenchant examination of how the personal intersects with the political, of the too-often high tolls of living Black in America. Trymaine's extraordinary journey is also a vital lesson on the healing power of sharing whole truths with our posterity." ―Mitchell S. Jackson, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
"A poetic, political, and powerful work―purposefully written to resonate with both today and the future." ―Shaka Senghor, bestselling author of Writing My Wrongs, Letters to the Sons of Society and How to be Free
This information about A Thousand Ways to Die was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Trymaine Lee is a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy award winning journalist and correspondent for NBC News and MSNBC. He's the host of the "Into America" podcast where he covers the intersection of Blackness, power, and politics. A contributing author to the 1619 Project, he has reported for the New York Times, the Huffington Post, and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. A Thousand Ways to Die is his first book.
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