Description
Book SynopsisWhat forges the unique human personality? In Island in the CityMicah McCrary, taking his genetic inheritance as immutable, considers the role geography has played in shaping who he is. Place often leaves indelible marks: the badges of self-discovery; the scars from adversity and hardship; the gilded stamps from personal triumphs; the tattoos of memory; and the new appendages—friendships, experiences, and baggage—we carry with us. Each place, with its own personality, has the power to form or revise our personhood in surprising and fascinating ways.
McCrary considers three places he has called home (Normal, Illinois; Chicago; and Prague) and reflects on how these surroundings have shaped him. His sharp-eyed, charmingmemoir-in-essays contemplates how aspects of his identity, such as being black, male, middle-class, queer, and American, have developed and been influenced by where he hangs his hat.
Trade Review"In the latest entry in the publisher's American Lives series, McCrary writes of becoming aware of his black heritage early in life but also about the impression his skin color had on others in small-town Normal, Illinois, in the 1980s and '90s. . . . A slim yet potent and intimately ruminative debut memoir on travel, maturity, and culture."—
Kirkus"McCrary takes readers down his memory lane. Some memories are loving and others are haunting. But the entire journey is transformative each step of the way. He lets us in on his point of view of culture and takes readers along on his travels as we watch him come into his true self."—Amber Ogden,
Hippocampus Magazine“In
Island in the City Micah McCrary dares over and over again to articulate the consequences of race, place, and the perils of having a sensitive and very particular sentience. Daring nonfiction is never quite normal; it is always an island in a city of conventional thought. McCrary’s work gives the reader this refuge and this challenge.”—David Lazar, author of
I’ll Be Your Mirror: Essays and Aphorisms“In these searching essays Micah McCrary takes us from Normal—both the place and the idea—to Chicago and Prague as he reckons with race, sex, money, and what it means to be at home.”—Eula Biss, author of
On Immunity: An InoculationTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
NORMAL
Oreo
Postures of Privilege
To Rebel against Men
Ever the Moth
CHICAGO
Metropolis
Green and Gray
Geraldyne's Room
Two Cities
Playground City
PRAGUE
Snow Globe Bohemia
Island in the City
A Good Fake Czech
Cabaret
An Idea of Prague
Epilogue
Works Cited
