I Am A Man by Steve Estes Book Review

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Recommended: The struggle to achieve equality for african american

I Am a Man by Steve Estes has been an incredible read; it is a book that I would recommend to anybody who loves to read, and also interested in Civil Rights. Steve Estes does an awesome job with the organization, and details of this book. This book starts in 1968 with black workers in Memphis protesting about low wages, horrible working conditions, and horrible treatments. These workers wanted higher pay to support their families and to establish a union. They started a declaration “I Am a Man!” as their motto. Estes states that the strikers chose this motto because “manhood” was more than what it seemed a long tradition that started from the days of slavery. On (page 4), this strike known as, The Memphis Sanitation Strike shows that one cannot appreciate the fullness of the African American struggles for freedom and showing the relationship and ideas about gender relationships and also identity.
The book then shows different ways of how manhood has always played a part in black freedom struggles. Estes starts to explore the participation of black men in World War II, and where the beginning of the civil rights movement began. The World War II used a language of masculinity to increase different ranks of the military, “the notion that are men are more powerful than women, that they should have control over their own lives and the authority over others” (page 7). They were posters that said, “Man the guns”, or “What did you do during the war daddy?” these posters were used to say that man is a protector of the home. World War II also started man power shortages which opened up new advantages for women and minorities, there was less white men. Estes sees this challenge as a white man supremacy, which surfaced around the 1950’s and...

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...out all these different shifts was less than the black man’s self image. The more politics, economics, and also social began to open it was easier for black men to show their manhood where in previous years, they would have been punished.
Steve Estes throughout the entire book showed his ideas, and presented different discussions of race and gender analysis. He ends the book with an outline of America’s gender and race politics from 1980 until present day. The way author Steve Estes explores different leaders and events and their movements is amazing. The book I Am a Man is a journey that not shows gender conflicts but also racial conflicts of the twentieth century, but also an awareness and welcome to civil rights.

Works Cited

Estes, Steve. I am a man!: race, manhood, and the civil rights movement. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Print.

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