The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn’t, and Why Audiobook

Quotes

• “A sharp-eyed musing on the history of the word and how it bears, or should bear, on a media-driven culture that is dangerously ahistorical, especially in matters of race.”

  — Los Angeles Times Book Review

• “Important, timely, and much-needed...a brilliant and bracing history lesson.”

  — Washington Post

• “Provocative and compelling...Asim’s book is not just the etymology of the word but also a capsule history of racism in America.”

  — Newsday

• “[Asim] sweeps over this sensitive and contradictory terrain—including black Americans’ use of the word—with practicality, while dispensing gentle provocations…Clear, engaging writing increases the pleasure.”

  — Publishers Weekly

• “[Asim] is most eloquent when relating how African Americans have been characterized in our culture; how the word nigger has been employed to oppress, belittle, dismiss, humiliate, and ridicule black people; and how they themselves have increasingly used it to satirize and oppose that oppression.”

  — Library Journal

•  “Informed, sensible and impassioned.”

  — Kirkus Reviews