Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) had a short but influential life as a psychoanalyst-philosopher who applied Freudian insights to the problems of racism and colonialism. In Fanon for Beginners, Deborah Wyrick draws—literally in this illustrated book—a heroic if not entirely uncritical portrait. A black French citizen from Martinique, Fanon was appalled by the relegation of darker ethnicities to secondary status. He explored racism as a pathology triggering neurosis as people of African descent vainly sought to conform to European standards of beauty and strove for white acceptance. Racism, which sees the world in unreal and predetermined categories, is inherently unreasonable, he thought. Fanon for Beginners offers an engaging 101 course in the thinker-activist’s life and work.
