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His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice
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About This Book
A landmark biography by two prizewinning Washington Post reporters that reveals how systemic racism shaped George Floyd's life and legacy--from his family's roots in the tobacco fields of North Carolina, to ongoing inequality in housing, education, health care, criminal justice, and policing--telling the singular story of how one man's tragic experience brought about a global movement for change. The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by white officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off a series of protests in the United States and around the world, awakening millions to the dire need for reimagining this country's broken systems of policing. But behind a face that would be graffitied onto countless murals, and a name that has become synonymous with civil rights, there is the reality of one man's stolen life: a life beset by suffocating systemic pressures that ultimately proved inescapable. This biography of George Floyd shows the athletic young boy raised in the projects of Houston's Third Ward who would become a father, a partner, a friend, and a man constantly in search of a better life. In retracing Floyd's story, Washington Post reporters Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa bring to light the determination Floyd carried as he faced the relentless struggle to survive as a Black man in America. Placing his narrative within the larger context of America's deeply troubled history of institutional racism, His Name Is George Floyd examines the Floyd family's roots in slavery and sharecropping, the segregation of his Houston schools, the overpolicing of his communities, the devastating snares of the prison system, and his attempts to break free from drug dependence--putting today's inequality into uniquely human terms. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews and extensive original reporting, Samuels and Olorunnipa offer a poignant and moving exploration of George Floyd's America, revealing how a man who simply wanted to breathe ended up touching the world.
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Reviews
"Samuels and Olorunnipa enlarge on the poster image by introducing us to people whose lives were changed by encountering Floyd ..."
"A sometimes painful read, this revealing deep dive into George Floyd's life places his tragic story in the broader context of race in America."
"Interwoven with the biographical details are incisive sketches of the political and historical events that have shaped life for Floyd's family and other Black Americans ..."
"In the page-turner second half of the book, the authors largely put aside efforts to link Floyd to broader racial trends and statistics as they follow him to Minneapolis, where he moved in 2017 in hopes of starting over ..."
"Samuels and Olorunnipa take pains to offer capsule histories of the structural roots of racism in the criminal justice and education systems — with their impact on wealth and homeownership — to better tell Floyd's story holistically."
"But it is also a depressing reminder of how much work needs to be done, of the lessons that still need to be learned this deep into the 21st century."
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