Tope Folarin is a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington, DC. He won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2013 and was shortlisted once again in 2016. He was also named to the 2019 Africa39 list of the most promising African writers under 40. He was educated at Morehouse College and the University of Oxford, where he earned two Master's degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. A Particular Kind of Black Man is his first book.
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A Particular Kind of Black ManA Novel
We had dozens of books. My father never bought us toys, and he always claimed that he was too broke to buy us new clothes, but somehow we each received at least three new books each month. Most of our books were nonfiction - short biographies, children’s encyclopedias, textbooks - because Dad was convinced that novels were for entertainment purposes only, and he always told us that we would have time for entertainment when we were old enough to make our own decisions. So Tayo and I would huddle in a single bed, his or mine, with a biography about George Washington, or a book about the invention of the telephone, and each of us would read a page and hand the flashlight over.
We eventually grew tired of these books, though, so we began to make up our own stories. Actually, Tayo made them up. Even though Tayo was younger than me, even though he looked up to me and followed me in every other part of our lives, he was a much better storyteller than I was. He was almost as good as Mom.
He always began:
“Once upon a time . . .”
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A Particular Kind of Black ManA Novel
The following morning Dad woke us up with his good-morning song, and when we reached the garage we saw an old, thin, beat-up mattress on the floor.
“Put it in the back of the truck,” he said. “That’s where you guys will relax between your shifts.”
We placed the mattress where he told us, right up against the freezer, and we brought along a couple pillows so the bed would be even more comfortable. As we were reclining on it Dad appeared and stared at us.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Tayo, Femi, and I looked at each other, and then we looked around. Dad shook his head slowly.
“What about your books? What do you think this is? A time to rest? If you aren’t working then you’re reading! Go bring your books!”
We ran back inside and brought out a couple of books and placed them on the mattress. Dad surveyed the titles and shook his head again.
“Bring more. I expect each of you to finish one book each day.”
We brought more books and piled them high against the freezer. Dad nodded, then he settled in the driver’s seat and started the engine.
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A Particular Kind of Black ManA Novel
I saw the long line as I approached the other truck, and I had to apologize many times because a few people thought I was trying to cut in front of them. I knocked on the back of the truck and Tayo opened it for me, and then he rushed back to Freddy with a package of ice cream in his hand. Ade was playing with a ball on the bed, and he giggled at me when I waved. I asked Tayo if they had any extra boxes of snow cones or Fudgsicles, and he shook his head.
I sprinted back and told Dad the news, and he dispatched Mom to the house to pick up more ice cream. We were already out of a few items by the time she returned, and a great cheer rose up as she walked through the crowd, carrying boxes of ice cream above her head.
I placed my hand on my father’s shoulder and he turned around and smiled at me. His smile was wide and wondrous. Suddenly I wanted to hug him and tell him it would always be like this. I wanted to tell him that he would always be a star.
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“Wild, vulnerable, lived . . . A study of the particulate self, the self as a constellation of moving parts.” —Elaine Castillo, New York Times Book Review [on A Particular Kind of Black Man]
"From the breathless first sentence, to the devastating last, this is a particularly mesmerizing kind of novel." —Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings [on A Particular Kind of Black Man]
“A Particular Kind of Black Man is an audacious debut, a book that is many things at once: a profound immigration narrative, a moving coming of age story, and an appraisal and defense of the novel as an essential 21st-century art form. The structure—fluid, slippery, a suspended chord in search of resolution—echoes the journey of the protagonist, and, indeed, of America. In these brilliant, searing, heartbreaking and hopeful pages, Tope Folarin has given us a novel that many of us will revisit for years to come." —Jeffery Renard Allen, author of Song of the Shank and Rails Under My Back
Selected Works
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An engrossing storyteller, Tope Folarin crafts marvelous sentences that act as a clear pane of glass through which one glimpses an upside-down world. His fable-like novel is playful in its nostalgia, painful in its examination of the way ready-made beliefs are overlaid onto the minds of children as they struggle to find a self. Folarin captures the surreal judder of craziness that comes from growing up in America and then leaving it to return to the country you’re supposedly from. His work is threaded with secrets – some that must be broken open and brought to light, others that must be held close to the heart.