A Performative Autoethnography of Five Black American Men

Book excerpt: In this book, Stefan Battle weaves together autoethnographic narrative and ethnographic performance material from his own life and those of four other Black men, to show the untold impact of racial trauma on these everyday lives. By engaging readers with these experiences, stories, and pain, the book aims to help to stop racial trauma and heal the race-based grief of the many Black men who need to speak out against racial injustice United States. Battle organizes the book as a performative account of a one-day workshop that he might teach to college students or other adults. He uses individual activities including an interview with a White woman regarding her relationship to race and racism, a staged reading in which five Black men share their stories, an audience discussion about race and racism, and Battle’s performative talk, sharing the author’s desire for people of all races, to self-reflect and then talk among themselves about race and racism. Battle’s powerful book reveals that each Black man’s unique story is important and that understanding something of a person’s hidden context for processing the traumas of racism can lead to new understanding and healing. To this end, Battle examines issues such as Black men's mental health and the wider societal systemic racism in the US that provokes tension and harm to the racial victimization of Black men. Suitable for students and scholars of qualitative research and autoethnography in the social sciences, communication studies, education, social work, and Africana or Black studies, this book will also be of interest to anyone seeking to better understand and engage with the Black male experience in the US.