Customer Reviews

To Serve the Living: Funeral Directors and the African American Way of Death

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This was a pretty good book and is able to be read fairly quickly. But it really wasn't what I thought it would be. The title I think is misleading. I suppose it depends on how you look at it. Perhaps it is correct. I am a white man and I did not realize that funeral directors played such an important role in the fabric of black culture and politics. I do now. I know funerals have always been important and done well with black people. That funeral directors and funeral homes were involved in how blacks have progressed in America is what I learned with this book. Being a baby boomer and not from the South, I did not realize how serious prejudice was. I see now that funeral directors were important to black culture in America and that they really respected and revered their undertakers, which no other segment of American society really does. Different cultures and ethnicities have customs and traditions but do not necessarily revere the role of the undertaker. They are just served by them. Black undertakers understand the role they play in burying their community and they adhere to it and keep it timely and out in front which is very admirable. I have always been impressed with black funeral traditions. I was just hoping this book delved into that aspect more than the political aspect of it all.