*Finalist for the National Book Award for Non-fiction* 'His Name Is George Floyd is essential
for our times.' Ibram X. Kendi author of How to Be an Antiracist You know how he died. This is
how he lived. Who was George Floyd? What did he hope for? What was life like for him? And why
has his death been the catalyst for such a powerful global response? The murder of George Floyd
sparked a summer of activism and unrest all over the world in 2020 from Shetland to São Paolo
as people marched under the Black Lives Matter banner demanding an end to racial injustice.
But behind a face that would be graffitied onto countless murals and a name that has become
synonymous with civil rights there is the reality of one man's stolen life. In His Name is
George Floyd we meet the kind young boy who talked his friends out of beating up a skinny kid
from another neighbourhood and then befriended him on the walk home. Big Floyd the high school
American football player who ignored his coach's pleas to be more aggressive and felt queasy at
the sight of blood. The man who fell victim to an opioid epidemic we are only just beginning to
understand. The sensitive son and loving father constantly in search of a better life in a
society determined to write him off based on things he had no control over: where he grew up
the size of his body and the colour of his skin. Drawing upon hundreds of interviews with
friends and family members His Name Is George Floyd reveals the myriad ways that structural
racism shaped Floyd's life and death - from his forebears' roots in slavery to an underfunded
education the overpolicing of his community and the devastating snare of the prison system. By
offering us an intimate portrait of this one emblematic life Robert Samuels and Toluse
Olorunnipa deliver a powerful and moving exploration of how a man who simply wanted to breathe
ended up touching the world.
