Black Skin, White Masks

Black Skin, White Masks

Penguin Modern Classics

Summary

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Frantz Fanon's urgent, dynamic critique of the effects of racism on the psyche is a landmark study of the black experience in a white world. Drawing on his own life and his work as a psychoanalyst to explore how colonialism's subjects internalize its prejudices, eventually emulating the 'white masks' of their oppressors, it established Fanon as a revolutionary anti-colonialist thinker.

'This century's most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism' Angela Davis

'Fanon is our contemporary ... In clear language, in words that can only have been written in the cool heat of rage, Fanon showed us the internal theatre of racism' Deborah Levy

'So hard to put down ... a brilliant, vivid and hurt mind, walking the thin line that separates effective outrage from despair' The New York Times Book Review

© Frantz Fanon 2021 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

  • This century's most compelling theorist of racism and colonialism
    Angela Davis

About the author

Frantz Fanon

Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) was born in Martinique and studied medicine in France, specializing in psychiatry. Sent to a hospital in Algeria, he found his sympathies turning towards the Algerian Nationalist Movement, which he later joined. He is considered one of the most important theorists of the psychology of race and his books Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth have been extremely influential.
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