Jerald Walker, the highly decorated author of the National Book Award finalist How to Make a Slave and Other Essays, proves in his latest triumph that he’s also a bona fide comedian. Magically Black and Other Essays captures how the political upheaval of recent years has multiplied the anxieties of American life and made it particularly fraught for Black Americans like Walker and his family. Bite-sized and deceptively funny, Magically Black’s impactful essays unfurl poignant cultural critiques sure to make you think.
Walker’s humor sprouts from situational absurdity. He riffs on the merits of keeping a racist contractor around, teaching Hannah Crafts’ The Bondwoman’s Narrative to well-meaning but misguided white college students, navigating the generational divide between him and his children and more. One of the most hilarious and smartly executed essays is “Crisis,” in which Walker makes his maiden voyage to a cannabis dispensary in a suit, drawing the suspicion of other customers and workers alike. Comically self-effacing, he wonders if being there is yet another symptom of the midlife crisis he has denied having, and his awkwardness sets in motion a comedy of errors. But beneath this facade, he is disoriented. Black Americans have lost generations of community members to incarceration thanks to the war on drugs; now, white people wait in long lines to buy weed legally.
Still, one essay takes a more serious tack: In the tender “Lost,” Walker waits three hours after curfew for his teenage son to return home from theater rehearsal. As tension builds, he examines what is at stake when Black families achieve economic success and move into white neighborhoods. At any time, his child can be othered into criminality or death. Shouldn’t Black boys be allowed the freedom to roam? Walker and his wife, Brenda—a wonderful addition to every essay she appears in—talk over parenting and racial anxiety. Conversations like this happen in many Black households, but Walker manages to capture how prevailing opinions shift throughout generations without ever indicating any viewpoint is wrong or foolish.
Walker is an erudite observer of America in all of its dangers and faults, and extracts the sum of its parts with a wink and a nod. Magically Black and Other Essays is a gift.
