Excellent book! I definitely recommend if you are new to the subject, especially if you need to learn the importance of putting aside your own ego and listening to those with lived experience.

Quick Summary: Informative and real

My Review: What Truth Sounds Like: Robert F. Kennedy, James Baldwin, and Our Unfinished Conversation About Race in America by Michael Eric Dyson was originally released in 2018. A 2025 edition was recently released by St. Martin's Press.

About the Book: "A “tour de force” (Harry Belafonte) now finally in paperback

An electrifying and traumatic encounter in the sixties crystallized the fraught conflict between conscience and politics – between morality and power – in addressing race. In 1963 Attorney General Robert Kennedy sought out James Baldwin to explain the rage that threatened to engulf black America. Baldwin brought along some friends, including playwright Lorraine Hansberry, psychologist Kenneth Clark, and a valiant activist, Jerome Smith.

Kennedy walked away from the nearly three-hour meeting angry – that the black folk assembled didn’t understand politics, and that they weren’t as easy to talk to as Martin Luther King. But especially that they were more interested in witness than policy. But Kennedy’s anger quickly gave way to empathy, especially for Smith. “I guess if I were in his shoes…I might feel differently about this country.” Kennedy set about changing policy – the meeting having transformed his thinking in fundamental ways.

Every big argument about race that persists to this day got a hearing in that room. And we grapple still with the responsibility of black intellectuals and artists to bring about social change. This book exists at the tense intersection of the conflict between politics and prophecy – of whether we embrace political resolution or moral redemption to fix our fractured racial landscape."

My Final Say: There are just some books that should be read and appreciated. This is one such book. At the end of the day, what one can ultimately say is that truth matters, just as justice, equality, and facing reality matters.

Whether readers like this writer's approach to the conversations of the past or present or whether they do not, what truly matters is the fact that for change to happen, people have to "come to the table" and talk. Talk requires truthful speaking and honest listening. From there, perhaps, transformative action between peoples who are willing to work together for the good of all can begin to take place.

Other: I would recommend that this book be read by all. More than that, I think that this book would be a helpful multicultural studies resource. HS-C level classes could definitely be developed around the content. Also, it would be excellent as a no-fi book club read.

Rating: 5/5
Recommend: Yes
Audience: A
Status/Level: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Appreciation is extended to the author, to the publisher (St. Martin's Press | St. Martin's Griffin), and to NetGalley. Thank you so very much for providing access to a digital ARC of this title. It was a pleasure to review. I am grateful to have had the opportunity.

I really enjoyed Dyson’s other book, Tears We Cannot Stop, and I’m a big reader of James Baldwin so I was intrigued by the premise of this book.

Ultimately I thought the book was a unique take on a topic and genre of which a lot of books the last few years have focused on. I think it’s a good read, especially for white people who want to understand how they can start what can he uncomfortable conversations about race and American and race in America.

I think perhaps I’ve just read a lot of similar toned things and so nothing about this—I already knew the relevant Kennedy history as well—felt particularly new or interesting to me.

Great book, just wasn’t for me. Highly recommend the author’s book Tears We Cannot Stop, though.

ARC provided via NetGalley in exchange for honest review.

Finished Reading

Pre-Read notes

I don't have any expectations for this book. I chose it because I will read pretty much anything about or by James Baldwin. This book proposed an interesting a ting connection between his writing and the organized deaths of two great political leaders.

Final Review to come:

Bobby contended that “the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.” p161

Review summary and recommendations

This is one of the best, most detailed, and brilliantly organized discussions on identity politics that I've ever read. I actually recommend it for anyone who wants to learn about the many facets of this noble subject.

Reading and writing for enslaved blacks was a matter of life and death, a fact that has often compelled black elites and others to favor highbrow instead of gutbucket literacy. p143

[B]igotry never bows to reason. p143

Reading Notes

Three (or more) things I loved:

1. Martin Luther King, Jr., crushed the facade of American decency and called on us to revisit our neglected moral ambition, preaching the gospel of love in a time of withering hate. p8 A perfect description for King's work.

2. Learning a lot about folks I'm not familiar with, like Harry Belafonte. As a black star with a light complexion, Belafonte had projected onto his golden dewy skin the sexually charged desire to escape the cage that consigned darker-skinned blacks to the bin of the less desirable, the less beautiful, the less glorious. But Belafonte seemed at once to revel in the privilege that came his way and to undercut it with his radical politics. p25 I might need to read more about this striking figure. I like people in the system who subvert the system.

3. There had to be great anger at just how manipulative and duplicitous the Kennedys had been in playing both sides of the racial divide against each other. Baldwin made a career of unmasking white privilege, too, and this surely rubbed Bobby raw,... In fact, the brutal battering he suffered at the hands of the Baldwin crew offers an important lesson to white people about how to start real change. And that involves sometimes sitting silently, and, finally, as black folk have been forced to do, listening, and listening, and listening, and listening some more. p33 White race activists often don't know how to act when working for Black social justice. This is a great lesson and story about this.

4. I think this is a very astute observation about the current political climate: Donald Trump is far more representative of the nation than many whites would like to admit....Trump is treating the entire nation as black.... One of the reasons for the special outrage of many white Americans toward him is that he has forgotten the rules; that sort of treatment is for blacks, not whites. That need not be a conscious belief for it to be true." p42

5. "Baldwin resisted being cast as the spokesman for America’s N-gro, but, poetically enough, it was his literary gifts that forged his place as witness to the humanity of black folk and the artifice of color. Baldwin relentlessly deconstructed the heart of whiteness." p58 I love how much I'm learning about James Baldwin.

6.The black character dies first, or certainly earlier than the white ones, is often alone with no partner, exists awkwardly in the white world, brings comic relief, and is only seen as authentic if she speaks in vernacular. Except that is no horror film; that is the real-life drama we have lived for the last 400 years. p85 This book contains such a compelling discussion of Black culture and white gaze.

7. I was fascinated by the discussion of celebrity activism and especially Colin Kapernik, who is one of my heros for his bravery and activism. About his activism, Beyonce one said, "It’s been said that racism is so American that when we protest racism, some assume we’re protesting America." p157

Three (or less) things I didn't love:

This section isn't only for criticisms. It's merely for items that I felt something for other than "love" or some interpretation thereof.

1. From the start of his 2016 presidential campaign, Sanders was prickly about race, uncomfortable with an outspoken, demanding blackness, resistant to letting go of his preference for class over race, or really, of subsuming race under class. p44 It's not fair to expect any people to ignore their communities needs in service of *another* communities' needs. Sometimes this gets even more egregious when conflicting needs occur among multiple communities.

2. There are so many really long block quotes in this one, sometimes multiple on one page. I think I would have rather read the concepts paraphrased and in the author's voice.

Rating: ⭐️🌟⭐️🌟⭐️ /5 shining stars
Please read this book.
Finished: Jan 10 '25
Format: digital arc, NetGalley
Read this book if you like:
📚 nonfiction books
🟰 social justice books
🖤 books about race in the US
🧑🏿‍🎤 books about black culture

Thank you to the author Michael Eric Dyson, publishers St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an advance accessible digital copy of WHAT TRUTH SOUNDS LIKE. All views are mine.
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A “tour de force” (Harry Belafonte) now finally in paperback. This tells us about how America see about races from time to time in a bright truth and no more hidden.

This book was very informative in terms of the historical context surrounding this topic. I liked how he discussed each integral person related to this such as Langston Hughes and gave a detailed overview of their point of view, which made comparisons between multiple point of views easier. I also like the connections to the modern day and the current people the author chose to include in this important discussion.

Avoid this book at all costs! Michael Eric Dyson is an author who deals solely with big words from his thesaurus, but who actually writes very little of value. I found his endless word salads of little used big words to be both boring and uninformative.

Thank you, St. Martin’s Press, for providing this book for review consideration via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

I just finished What Truth Sounds Like: RFK, James Baldwin And Our Unfinished Conversation About Race In America, by Michael Eric Dyson.

This book will be released on January 14, 2025.

The book is supposed to be about a 1963 meeting that Robert Kennedy had in apartment with James Baldwin, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, psychologist Kenneth Clark, activist Jerome Smith with him and several others. The meeting did not go well, as Kennedy was not prepared for the criticism that he and the administration was going to receive.

But, so little of the book was actually about that meeting. The rest of it was the author ranting about other subjects. There were rants on politicians, athletes and musicians, with each of those topics being split on discussing figures from the 1960s and the 2010s.

Occasionally, Dyson made a good point, but I spent most of the book wondering why did I decide to read this.

Those occasional good sets of paragraphs were the only things that resulted in this one getting a D, instead of an F. Goodreads and NetGalley require grades on a 1-5 star system. In my personal conversion system, a D equates to 1 star. (A or A+: 5 stars, B+: 4 stars, B: 3 stars, C: 2 stars, D or F: 1 star).

This review has been posted at NetGalley, Goodreads and my blog, Mr. Book’s Book Reviews

I finished reading this on September 1, 2024.