comment on perspective

The primary aspect to note about this work’s perspective is that it is written from the point of view of a relatively young black man (at the time of the book’s publication, the author was in his late thirties) anxious that his son be simultaneously aware of the dangers associated with being young and black and proud of the potential joys of being black. As noted above in “Structure”, however, the author’s perspective is not simply that of a loving, worried father: as he himself notes, he has a background in journalism and in academia, as well as in black activism, which gives him a variety of perspectives from which to write, all of which are represented in the book as a whole.