'Invisible Man': To be young and black in America

What does it mean to be a black man in America?

That question is at the center of Mychal Denzel Smith's new book, "Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man's Education."

It's a question he's been struggling with for years, a question he's still trying to answer at 29. But, he said, there's lots of people who think they have the answer.

"Whether that's from my parents or teachers or classmates — someone has an idea of who and what a young black man should be, and they're projecting that thing onto you," Smith told MPR News host Kerri Miller. His parents raised him to thwart those stereotypes — to be so respectable, to be so upstanding, to speak such "proper English" — so that other people's projections wouldn't stick.

They raised him that way, he said, "not because they're just trying to produce respectable citizens, but because they know when I go out into the world, all of those projections of the thug, of violence, all the other things — they're already in people's mind when they encounter me."

"Invisible Man" dives not just into Smith's upbringing, but into the onslaught of cultural messages that come his way.

"There's television, there's music, there's movies — there's all of these different messages one is receiving about who and what you are in the world, and so much of it is based in white supremacist notions of black male identity," he said. "I wanted to unpack all of that. I wanted to unpack what I had learned — where these messages came from, what purposes they served — to get at how one exists and thrives under these circumstances."

The narratives of black men in the news can too often be sorted into just two categories: celebrities and the deceased. There's LeBron James and Trayvon Martin, but what in between? Smith's book looks at the cultural and psychological impact of being surrounded by those limited narratives, and he calls into question the idea of what defines black masculinity.

It's "a genius piece of art that swims through politics and prose," Kiese Laymon said of the book. "Mychael has written a potential revolution."

For the full interview with Mychal Denzel Smith on "Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching," use the audio player above.

Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching