Comedian and activist Dick Gregory tells his life story — a childhood of poverty in St. Louis, work as a shoeshine boy and postal clerk, and his rise on the nightclub circuit as one of the first Black comics to perform before white audiences. Woven through the humor is a direct confrontation with American racism, beginning with the slur of the title, which Gregory dedicated to his mother with the promise that whenever the word was used, his book was being talked about. The memoir became a bestseller and a civil-rights-era classic.
Author: Dick Gregory (with Robert Lipsyte) · Original publisher: E. P. Dutton, New York, 1964
