My Vanishing Country

March 15, 2020
An African American attorney and politician reflects on the forces that shaped him. In a candid and affecting memoir, CNN political analyst Sellers, the youngest member of the South Carolina Legislature when he was elected in 2006, chronicles his evolution as a political activist. Sellers grew up in the rural town of Denmark, South Carolina, where his family moved in 1990. Sellers loved being "country," where he could ride his bike on back roads, fish in the ponds, and play in cotton fields. Even in what he describes as a bucolic setting, the civil rights movement pervaded the family's life: Both parents were activists; Sellers was "the campaign baby" during Jesse Jackson's second run for president in 1988; and when the phone rang, the caller might well be "Uncle" Julian Bond or "Aunt" Kathleen Cleaver. The author counts as decisive his education at historically black Morehouse College, where he was "bit by the political bug," winning his first campaign to become junior class president. Later, he mounted a successful run for election to the state legislature and, in 2014, resigned that seat to run for lieutenant governor. Although his Republican opponent won that race, Sellers garnered a respectable 41% of the vote. "I always tell people that we chipped away at the glass," he writes. Sellers admits disappointment with the black church for becoming "passive and insular at best at a time when it needs to be younger and more progressive." He is forthright, as well, about suffering from anxiety, which he attributes to the fear, rage, and anger that result from continued racial oppression. Hostilities, such as the hatred that led to the Mother Emanuel AME church tragedy in Charleston, are endemic. Donald Trump's election, Sellers asserts, was caused not by economic but cultural fear "that somehow, black and brown people were going to replace whites." A strong voice for social justice emerges in an engaging memoir.

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May 1, 2020
Sellers' first book is a memoir of his young life in the spotlight, interwoven with cultural and political commentary. In 2006, Sellers, an African American, was famously elected to the South Carolina legislature at age 22, beating a white, 26-year incumbent. His political life focused on underserved, and therefore vanishing, communities like his hometown of Denmark, South Carolina, a predominantly Black, rural town. Denmark has no hospital. After the birth of their twins, Sellers' wife needed emergency surgery. If they had been in Denmark, Sellers is clear that he would have lost his wife. Sellers reckons with the hardest of topics: the legacy of the 1968 Orangeburg Massacre, the contested removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House after the murder of nine members of the Mother Emanuel congregation, the election of Donald Trump, and the anger and anxiety many African Americans live with. To his credit, Sellers exposes his own flaws in this book; mistakes he's not proud of. This solidly written memoir is an important addition to contemporary politics shelves.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)