Description

---

A heartrending and engrossing memoir that challenges narratives of racial progress and postracial America.
“Every so often, a book comes along that changes the way we see, speak, and think about the world. Shattered is one of those books.” —Frank B. Wilderson III, author of Afropessimism and Incognegro

From a distance, Matthieu Chapman’s life and accomplishments serve as an example of racial progress in America: the first in his family to go to college, he earns two master’s degrees and a doctorate and then becomes a professor of theater. Despite his personal and academic success, however, the specter of antiblackness continues to haunt his every moment and interaction.

Told through fragments, facets, shards, slivers, splinters, and absences, Shattered places Chapman’s own story in dialogue with US history and structural analysis of race to relay the experience of being very alive in a demonstrably antiblack society—laying bare the impact of the American way on black bodies, black psyches, and black lives. From the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to the offices of higher education, from a Loyal White Knights flyer on his windshield to a play with black students written by a black playwright, Chapman’s life story embodies the resistance that occurs, the shattering, collapsing, and reconfiguring of being that happens in the collisions between conceptions of blackness. Shattered is a heartrending and thought-provoking challenge to narratives of racial progress and postracial America—an important reminder that systemic antiblack racism affects every black person regardless of what they achieve in spite of it.

About the Author

---

Matthieu Chapman is assistant professor of theater and head of theater studies at SUNY New Paltz. His writing has been published in Huffington Post and Pithead Chapel, among others. He holds degrees in theater and performance theory from San Diego State University, Mary Baldwin University, and University of California San Diego.

Praise For…

---

“Every so often, a book comes along that changes the way we see, speak, and think about the world. Shattered is one of those books. Chapman’s relentless prose interweaves compelling narrative with groundbreaking critical race theory in an unflinching analysis of the day-to-day violence inflicted on black beings in an antiblack world. A must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of race relations in America and answers to why black liberation remains deferred.”
Frank B. Wilderson III, author of Afropessimism and Incognegro

“I’m writing this while I’m back home in West Virginia visiting my mama, and I wish my pre-writer/professor black ass coulda read Matthieu Chapman’s Shattered as a teen because it woulda helped me navigate this complicated mess of growing up black in WV. Now, it’ll help me navigate this complicated mess of growing up black in this world. This important book is for everyone, and I hope all the young folks and old heads in any geography get a chance to read it. Thanks, homie.”
Steven Dunn, author of Potted Meat