Black is the Body

Contemplative and compassionate … Bernard’s voice is personable yet incisive in exploring the lived reality of race … [Her] wisdom and compassion radiate throughout this collection. * Publishers Weekly *Conceived while the author was hospitalized after being stabbed by a white man, these 13 formidable, destined-to-be-studied essays mark the emergence of an extraordinary voice on race in America. * Oprah Magazine *Emily Bernard is a master storyteller. She writes with an honesty and vulnerability that is uncommon. These stories are about what it means to be human-to love, to hurt, to heal. They will make you think, re-think, feel, and grow. * Nana-Ama Danquah, author of Willow Weep for Me: A Black Woman’s Journey through Depression *My very favorite book that I have read so far this year…It’s really life changing. If you get no other book this year, get Black Is the Body by Emily Bernard. * Ann Patchett *Of the 12 essays here, there’s not one that even comes close to being forgettable. Bernard’s language is fresh, poetically compact, and often witty … Bernard proves herself to be a revelatory storyteller of race in America who can hold her own with some of those great writers she teaches. * Maureen Corrigan *I was enthralled by her words, drawn into the tapestries woven by her language that manifest glimpses of her life experiences * Bad Form *Everybody should read it … Bernard explores heavy, knotty topics … with extraordinary warmth and nuance * Stylist *Black Is the Body is one of the most beautiful, elegant memoirs I’ve ever read. It’s about race, it’s about womanhood, it’s about friendship, it’s about a life of the mind, and also a life of the body. But more than anything, it’s about love. I can’t praise Emily Bernard enough for what she has created in these pages * Elizabeth Gilbert *

Emily Bernard is the Julian Lindsay Green and Gold Professor of English at the University of Vermont. She holds a B A and a PhD in American Studies from Yale University. Bernard has received fellowships from the Alphonse A. Fletcher Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the MacDowell Colony, the Vermont Arts Council, and the W. E. B. DuBois Institute at Harvard University. Her first book, Remember Me to Harlem- The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, which, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Bernard’s work has appeared in Harper’s, O Magazine, Oxford American, The Yale Review, The New Republic, and the American Scholar.