Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend

Notes from the Other Side of the Fist Bump

Ben Philippe

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN:
  9780063026452
• Print ISBN:
  9780063026445
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies

A biting, hilarious memoir in essays chronicling a lifetime of being the Black friend* in white spaces. (*see also: foreign kid, boyfriend, coworker, student, teacher, enemy)

"Flat-out funny. . . This is a great next-book for fans of  What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker  and  We Are Never Meeting in Real Life , but if a reader hasn't turned to either of those yet, Philippe's disarming, illuminating, and hilarious chronicle is a great place to start." — Booklist

In an era in which "I have many Black friends" is often a medal of wokeness, Ben Phillipe hilariously chronicles the experiences of being on the receiving end of those fist bumps. He takes through his immigrant childhood, from wanting nothing more than friends to sit with at lunch, to his awkward teenage years, to college in the age of Obama, and on to adulthood during the first Trump administration—two sides of the same American coin.

Ben takes his role as your new Black friend seriously, providing original and borrowed wisdom on stereotypes, slurs, the whole "swimming thing," how much Beyoncé is too much Beyoncé, Black Girl Magic, the rise of the Karens, affirmative action, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other conversations you might want to have with your new BBFF.

Sure, I'll Be Your Black Friend is a conversational take on topics both light and heavy universal, and deeply personal that reveals incisive truths about the need for connection in all of us.

"I still mute Ben's texts, but I inhaled his hilarious book, which is so full of razor-sharp wit and punches to the gut that it almost made me sick. In a good way!" —Samantha Irby,  New York Times –bestselling author of  Wow, No Thank You

"Philippe has created a funny, and at times harrowing, memoir of his experience as a Black man." — Library Journal

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• One: Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Tell-All Writer
• Two: Ten Things to Know Before Befriending Me, or “Which Black Guy Are You Getting?”
• Three: The First Gift
• Four: Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Canadian
• Five: Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Foreign Kid
• Six: Sure, I’ll Be Your Anchor Baby
• Seven: Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Son
• Eight: Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Boyfriend
• Nine: How to Go through Life without Drowning, Part I
• Ten: Sure, I Guess I’ll Be Your Classic Name-Brand Cookie
• Eleven: How to Go through Life without Drowning, Part II
• Twelve: Boomerangs Come Back
• Thirteen: From Another Mother
• Fourteen: I Was Promised Ballplayers and Rap Stars, Addicted to the Limelight
• Fifteen: Sure, I’ll Be Your Woke Black Friend
• Sixteen: Sherman Klump v. Buddy Love
• Seventeen: Ivory Skin, Eyes of Something Green
• Eighteen: Sister, Sister
• Nineteen: Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Guy—Emphasis on Guy
• Twenty: How to Go through Life without Drowning, Part III
• Twenty-One: Song of the South
• Twenty-Two: Sure, I’ll Be Your Accessory to Larceny
• Twenty-Three: Sure, I’ll Be Your One That Got Away
• Twenty-Four: Black Ghost Goes, “Boo!”
• Twenty-Five: Sure, I’ll Be Your Black Sidekick
• Twenty-Six: Sure, I’ll Be Your 2016 Shithole Rescapee
• Twenty-Seven: Smile Through It
• Twenty-Eight: How to Live Strictly on Common Grounds
• Twenty-Nine: Sure, I’ll Be Your Bl— RACE WARS!!!
• Thirty: One of the Good Ones
• Thirty-One: Conclusion: How to Thrive in a Black Body at Any Age
• Lexicon to a Black Experience Narrative
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About the Author
• Also by Ben Philippe
• Copyright
• About the Publisher