I would recommend this book.

Not quite a 4 star book but a solid 3.5.

Black Skin, White Masks is a provocative title and that is why I picked it up. I wish I had known more about who the author was (though the foreword provides some detail) because I started reading with the hopes of a more analytical exploration than what was presented. Knowing now Frantz Fanon was a psychiatrist and philosopher, the book makes perfect sense. Most of the book is philosophical with Fanon trying to suggest what it means to be black and if the concept of being black is artificial or not. In the end though, I think it’s more about Fanon trying to better identify who he is as a person without depending on external stimuli to influence his conclusions.

A solid read but if you are expecting more than anecdotal evidence, you maybe slightly disappointed

Hoping to own a copy and reread!

The arguments made in this book speak for themselves - I have only deducted it a star because it's so unfocused, and jumps disorientingly between scientific reporting (in psychiatric analysis) and general anthropology (of the Jared Diamond variety).

OMG! Banal to say to those who know it, but it IS a seminal book. The first analytic perspective from the oppressed group. This book, and all the reference material one can find extending from it, would be worthy of a 6 month long focus for a group discussion. All readers have to keep in mind the time-frame it was written in, a period when patriarchal Freudian/ Lacanian psychoanalytics gave up on any truly constructive thought about the female psyche. Fanon is brilliant and theatrical with his language, all the while driven as he logically extends thoughts. He dared where NO intellectual tread discussing colonialism's impact on the psyche, trying to understand and offer a perspective that recuperated the humanity of all involved in racism in order to end racism, by exposing its violence double-standards, conflicts and circular logic. So many new words and terms coined in this RADICAL book. The chapters are essays, like roller coaster carts linked loosely together, one even lyrical in its free-form. He taps into a global range of material old and new to express and substantiate his descriptions referring also to authorities from the white western experience. The French ethic around colonialism was more inclusive than any of the other European countries versions, but brutish all the same in its alienation producing pathologies in both white and black peoples' hearts and souls, the oppressed and oppressors. He missed his chance to see that racism is a tool of a higher order, i.e. patriarchal dominance-ordered system of socialisation. As Freud died depressed, Fanon disillusioned with merely understanding power -structures. Though never passive, his last book (The Wretched of the Earth) would be the actual call to arms of the oppressed as the concepts from Black Skin, White Masks had undergone development as he wrote and attempted to treat psychiatric patients, from both the perpetrators and victims of colonial violence. My copy is the first English translation made in 1964, when the book and person heretofore hurled in to oblivion, banned in France was drawn out of the dry well and valued. There is a later translation which is drier in my assessment but interesting for even those reasons. I know that I will be looking for this book in French, as well, to step behind some of the curtains raised during translation. I learned so much about sentiments I had heard about 3rd and 4th hand as a child, and then during our political activism of the 70s. I listened to uni lectures on this book, I then watched the terse film on the horrific situation in Algiers, called "The Battle of Algiers" . I felt like i have swan dived off into deep waters, some of which are familiar to me as a traveler, sojourner and yet Sooooo different. This is a MUST read for anyone who wants to attempt fathoming racism.

Really interesting psychological examination of the black man’s experience in a white world (well, one chapter addresses black women, but in a limited context). Powerful in its starkness and forthright prose, “walking the thin line,” as one reviewer said, between outrage and despair.

fanon is incredible. always.