Title: Hard Head City
Author: Calvin Kerr Jr.
Publisher: GoldTouch Press LLC
ISBN: 978-1951461614
Pages: 122
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Reviewed by: Nicole Olson
Hollywood Book Reviews
Every person could stand to read this book. In Hard Head City, author Calvin Kerr Jr. tells eight short stories involving diverse group of people living in the United States of America and abroad through various times in history. His writing tells the truth, the stories of racism and hardship experienced by African American men and women. He gives the reader a small glimpse of what it is like to live in a country where the other is pushed to the side, hidden, swept under the rug.
I remember learning about segregated bathrooms when I was in elementary school – I naively remembered thinking these “whites only” signs were long gone before my parents were born. I learned in the very first chapter of Kerr’s book that these signs were still around in the 1980s. The first story spans the life of a man who grew up seeing “whites only” signs to being present at the inauguration of Barack Obama. Reading about the inauguration experience of the first narrator in Kerr’s book was interesting because I was also present at this monumental event in United States history. I was only in high school, and there was so much about racism in the United States that I did not know about.
In eight true stories I think Kerr does a good job of showing various experiences in black America. From teenage girls to soldiers – the author tells tales which sound too horrible to be true, but by the way he writes it, is possible to see that they are. Towards the end of the book, Kerr includes a poem about a girl named Karen Hunt. He shows the fate of so many young African Americans who end up in juvenile detention centers. Their story is often unheard, and they are tossed away, unable to pursue their dreams or chase their futures, no matter how innocent they prove to be.
Reading the stories in Kerr’s book opened my eyes to the hardships that African Americans face. The characters in these true stories have been in situations no one should have to live through. Even though the people Kerr writes about have widely different life experiences than I do – it was possible to relate to several of the stories. There is something universal about being a teenager in America – we all know, it’s hard already. Kerr shows how much harder it is to be black, and poor in America – no matter which stage of life a person is in. This reality is something the majority of the country is privileged to know nothing about. Kerr’s book is an important work of justice in giving voices to the voiceless.