Nigger : An Autobiography (Mass Market Paperback)

by Dick Gregory (Author), Robert Lipsyte (Contributor) "It's a sad and beautiful feeling to walk home slow on Christmas Eve after you've been out hustling all day, shining shoes in the white..." (more)
Key Phrases: big entertainer, rich white folks, Big Pres, Dick Gregory, Mister Ben (more...)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pocket (November 15, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671735608
• ISBN-13: 978-0671735609
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #117,287 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CUT THE CANCER OUT!, March 26, 2000

By	Cole Lee (FL, US) - See all my reviews

I am a 13 year old cacagun male in 7th grade in St. Augustine, FL. This should be required reading for all students in middle school and high school. I recently was denied my freedom of speech when told i couldn't do a book report on this facinating title. I was told it might offened some people. i replyed that if the message of the book was fully understood, it would fail to offend people. I was still denied. Don't let the title of this book stiffle the message. ".....when a man calls me a nigger, he is is calling me something i am not. The nigger exists only in his mind, therfore he's the nigger. I feel sorry for such a man." -Gregory. Nigger is just a word that people give power, if we stop giving this word power, it won't hurt anyone. Read this book.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Niggers Come In All Colors, December 16, 2000

By	talkytina "talkytina" (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Nigger (Library Binding)

Dick Gregory's autobiography is a book you will finish in one night because you won't put it down! You will also find yourself re-reading most of it for the remainder of your life. But "Nigger" is just the start of something much bigger. Gregory became arguably the greatest man who has ever lived. Tune into his website ... in conjunction with ordering and reading some of his books available from amazon.com. Mr. Gregory made a lot of mistakes during his childhood and as a young adult, but he found something inside himself that helped to change the world. Junior high school is a perfect time to begin reading this book. "Nigger" is funny and provocative. Gregory uses humor to get his message across in a one of a kind way. It should be required reading for ALL junior high and high schools.

30 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A strong memoir, a weak ending, August 5, 2001

By	Daniel Mackler (www.iraresoul.com) - See all my reviews

A strong memior, lots of touching and interesting detail about his life growing up, his constant struggle to overcome adversity. I totally empathized with his hustling and lying at points to get ahead in a world so poised against him. the main thing I liked about the book was his VERY HUMAN side, his compassion for himself, his pain he suffered at being poor, mostly fatherless, black, dirty, hungry, uneducated. I loved it that he could cry, he could keep his humanity despite the world's cruelty...and not just keep it and feel it, but write about it later.

Weak point: the ending petered out. It went from being a man's internal struggle to "make it" in the world - the place in which I found the book's power lay - to being just another typical civil rights journal. And although I think the civil rights movement has its place, and Dick Gregory his place within it, I think I would have found the book far more satisfying it ended by its author turning further inward and exploring his own motives on his own purely personal journey, rather than outward to the struggle of society. Perhaps he wasn't ready to write on this level when he published his memoir, as he was only 30 or 31 when he wrote it, but to me his lack of wisdom still doesn't let the book off the hook.