 | |
| Author | Robert Samuels Toluse Olorunnipa |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Subject | George Floyd |
| Published | 17 May 2022 |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
| Pages | 432 |
| Awards | Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction |
| ISBN | 978-0-593-49061-7 |
His Name Is George Floyd: One Man's Life and the Struggle for Racial Justice is a 2022 biography about murder victim George Floyd written by Washington Post journalists Robert Samuels and Toluse Olorunnipa. [1] [2]
The book uses the life of George Floyd and his murder by police officer Derek Chauvin as a lens through which to examine racism in the United States. It draws from interviews with Floyd's friends and family and members of his local community. Floyd's ancestors are discussed—they worked as tenant farmers during the Reconstruction era. Aspects of Floyd's life such as his parenting, drug addiction and convictions are covered. Race-related commentary about education housing segregation, incarceration, police brutality and terrorism in the United States is connected to the life of Floyd. [3]
His Name is George Floyd was awarded the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction with the following citation: "An intimate, riveting portrait of an ordinary man whose fatal encounter with police officers in 2020 sparked an international movement for social change, but whose humanity and complicated personal story were unknown." [4]
The book was also a finalist for the 2022 National Book Award in Nonfiction, the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography. Several organizations named it one of the top books of 2022, including TIME and Kirkus Reviews.[ citation needed ]
Kehinde Andrews of The Guardian praised the book's coverage of Floyd, saying that it "does not paint him as a saint but explains his flaws in the context of his experiences". Andrews approved of the authors' "valiant effort to use Floyd's story to educate society about the ills of structural racism", but suggested that they could have focused on a subject such as Breonna Taylor to draw attention to the lesser covered oppression of Black women in the United States. [3]
In The Atlantic , Imbolo Mbue similarly praised the authors "for presenting Floyd as the complex character that he was". Mbue recommended the book as "expertly researched" and "a necessary and enlightening read", highlighting in particular passages that celebrate African American culture and "depict how much Floyd was loved and how much he loved back". However, Mbue criticized that the book could have "more pointedly" highlighted the "hypocrisy of governments and corporations and all manners of institutions" that showed support for the Black Lives Matter movements out of ulterior motives. [5]
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On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black American man, was murdered in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a 44-year-old white police officer. Floyd had been arrested after a store clerk alleged that he made a purchase using a counterfeit $20 bill. Chauvin knelt on Floyd's neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face-down in a street. Two other police officers, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, assisted Chauvin in restraining Floyd. Lane had also pointed a gun at Floyd's head before Floyd was handcuffed. A fourth police officer, Tou Thao, prevented bystanders from intervening.
George Perry Floyd Jr. was a black American man who was murdered by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill, on May 25, 2020. Derek Chauvin, one of four police officers who arrived on the scene, knelt on Floyd's neck and back for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, causing his death from a lack of oxygen. After his murder, a series of protests against police brutality, especially towards black people, quickly spread across the United States and globally. His dying words, "I can't breathe", became a rallying slogan.
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