JULY 2020 - AudioFile
This listen couldn’t be more timely. In the midst of the Black Live Matters movement, Sellers shares his story of growing up Black in the South and making his way to national prominence as a politician and then a CNN analyst. He’s the son of activist parents, so the path he took is not surprising. Nor it is surprising to learn he has a smooth, confident delivery. Sellers shares the frustrations and hopes of being African-American at a time of tremendous change—from the promise of President Obama to the disappointments of the current administration. And he does so in an engaging and forceful style that might leave listeners wondering if (hoping?) he’ll give up television for a return to politics. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Angela Rye
My Vanishing Country solidifies Bakari Sellers as a major voice for his generation. He has taken the torch from his father Cleveland Sellers and soared. His brutally honest look at the systemic racism that continues to hold back the black working class is revelatory. His ownership of being Black, Country, and Proud is refreshing.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Bakari Sellers’ My Vanishing Country is exactly the book we need right now. The issues he raises are deeply personal and important to me. In his captivating memoir, Sellers not only brings a personal touch to the resilient people in places like his hometown Denmark, South Carolina, but he also rings the alarm about dangerous policies being enacted across the state and the devastating impact that they are having on people’s everyday lives.
BookPage
Family trauma—even inherited trauma—can take a tremendous toll on children. But as Bakari Sellers makes plain in My Vanishing Country, family trauma can also be a source of strength.
Charlamagne Tha God
Bakari lays out a blueprint for anyone thinking just because their life starts on a dirt road in the rural south, it must end on a dirt road in the rural south. If you want to know what a black man can achieve in this country with faith in a higher power and a strong family structure, then this is the memoir you need.
Tyler Perry
"My Vanishing Country is both a timely and timeless book that sheds a light on the unseen and gives a voice to the many who are unheard."
Van Jones
Bakari Sellers’ My Vanishing Country is urgent and essential reading brimming with compassion and courage.”
Bakari Sellers’ My Vanishing Country is exactly the book we need right now. The issues he raises are deeply personal and important to me. In his captivating memoir, Sellers not only brings a personal touch to the resilient people in places like his hometown Denmark, South Carolina, but he also rings the alarm about dangerous policies being enacted across the state and the devastating impact that they are having on people’s everyday lives.”
%COMM_CONTRIB%Hillary Rodham Clinton
Andrew Gillum
Prepare yourself to be moved when you read My Vanishing Country. Bakari Sellers’ memoir is a touching, poignant, and at times funny paean to a world that many of us know well. Sellers’ deep compassion for his neighbors and unconditional love for his family is ultimately a universal story of hope and faith.
JULY 2020 - AudioFile
This listen couldn’t be more timely. In the midst of the Black Live Matters movement, Sellers shares his story of growing up Black in the South and making his way to national prominence as a politician and then a CNN analyst. He’s the son of activist parents, so the path he took is not surprising. Nor it is surprising to learn he has a smooth, confident delivery. Sellers shares the frustrations and hopes of being African-American at a time of tremendous change—from the promise of President Obama to the disappointments of the current administration. And he does so in an engaging and forceful style that might leave listeners wondering if (hoping?) he’ll give up television for a return to politics. J.P.S. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2020-03-02
An African American attorney and politician reflects on the forces that shaped him.
In a candid and affecting memoir, CNN political analyst Sellers, the youngest member of the South Carolina Legislature when he was elected in 2006, chronicles his evolution as a political activist. Sellers grew up in the rural town of Denmark, South Carolina, where his family moved in 1990. Sellers loved being “country,” where he could ride his bike on back roads, fish in the ponds, and play in cotton fields. Even in what he describes as a bucolic setting, the civil rights movement pervaded the family’s life: Both parents were activists; Sellers was “the campaign baby” during Jesse Jackson’s second run for president in 1988; and when the phone rang, the caller might well be “Uncle” Julian Bond or “Aunt” Kathleen Cleaver. The author counts as decisive his education at historically black Morehouse College, where he was “bit by the political bug,” winning his first campaign to become junior class president. Later, he mounted a successful run for election to the state legislature and, in 2014, resigned that seat to run for lieutenant governor. Although his Republican opponent won that race, Sellers garnered a respectable 41% of the vote. “I always tell people that we chipped away at the glass,” he writes. Sellers admits disappointment with the black church for becoming “passive and insular at best at a time when it needs to be younger and more progressive.” He is forthright, as well, about suffering from anxiety, which he attributes to the fear, rage, and anger that result from continued racial oppression. Hostilities, such as the hatred that led to the Mother Emanuel AME church tragedy in Charleston, are endemic. Donald Trump’s election, Sellers asserts, was caused not by economic but cultural fear “that somehow, black and brown people were going to replace whites.”
A strong voice for social justice emerges in an engaging memoir.
