Racism is so simple, really. It is a black-white affair, with the white man holding all the power. Why is it so hard to recognize? Why have we not been able to stop this poison that is eating away at every sphere of life in North America, from the race for the White House to college campuses and simple meetings between colleagues and friends?

Dany Laferrière addresses this issue not as a politician or pamphleteer, but as a writer. In this, he places himself as the heir of James Baldwin. He puts flesh and pain into this tragedy that is racism.

He speaks to us of desire and suffering, of music and poetry, of anger and pride. He speaks to us of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, of Jean-Michel Basquiat's suit and Angela Davis's afro. He speaks to us of Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes, of Anténor Firmin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, who were lynched because they dared to look at a white woman. He speaks to us of colors and music, of humiliation and triumph, of suffering and redemption, of the photographs of Gordon Parks and the improvisations of Miles Davis, of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Richard Wright, of WEB Du Bois and Léopold Senghor, of Tupac Shakur and Abraham Lincoln, of Martin Luther King and René Lévesque.

Finally, he tells us about Bessie Smith, who sang about her endless pain so that we could forget ours, and about Toni, Maya, Billie, Nina, these girls to whom the world belongs.

The author of The Enigma of Return gives us here a book entwined with our times and current events, but he takes the necessary height so that we can embrace it in all its complexity, find the strength to heal the wounds that still bleed.