New York Times Bestseller What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy CNN analyst
and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for
the rural South in this important book that illuminates the lives of America's forgotten black
working-class men and women. Part memoir part historical and cultural analysis My Vanishing
Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past present and future. Anchored in in
Bakari Seller's hometown of Denmark South Carolina Country illuminates the pride and pain
that continues to fertilize the soil of one of the poorest states in the nation. He traces his
father's rise to become friend of Stokely Carmichael and Martin Luther King a civil rights
hero and member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to explore the
plight of the South's dwindling rural black working class?many of whom can trace their
ancestry back for seven generations. In his poetic personal history we are awakened to the
crisis affecting the other ?Forgotten Men & Women ? who the media seldom acknowledges. For
Sellers these are his family members neighbors and friends. He humanizes the struggles that
shape their lives: to gain access to healthcare as rural hospitals disappear to make ends meet
as the factories they have relied on shut down and move overseas to hold on to precious
traditions as their towns erode to forge a path forward without succumbing to despair. My
Vanishing Country is also a love letter to fatherhood?to Sellers' father his lodestar whose
life lessons have shaped him and to his newborn twins who he hopes will embrace the Sellers
family name and honor its legacy.
