Standing in the Shadows
Black Men and Depression

Available September 2004.

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The first book to reveal the depths of black men’s buried mental and emotional pain, Standing In the Shadows weaves the author’s story of his twenty-five-year struggle with depression with a cultural analysis of how the illness is perceived in the black community—and why nobody wants to talk about it.

In mainstream society depression and mental illness is still somewhat of a taboo subject; in the black community it is a topic that is almost completely shrouded in secrecy. As a result, millions of black men are suffering in silence, or get treatment only in the most extreme circumstances—in hospital emergency rooms, homeless shelters, and prisons. The neglect of emotional disorders among men in the black community is nothing less than racial suicide. John Head’s explosive work Standing In the Shadows addresses what can be done to help those who need it most.

In this groundbreaking book, veteran journalist and award-winning author John Head argues that the problem can be traced back to slavery, when it was believed that blacks were unable to feel inner pain because they had no psyche. This myth has damaged generations of African American men and their families, and has created a society that blames black men for being violent and aggressive without considering that depression might be a root cause. The author also explores the roles of the black church, the black family, and the changing nature of black women in American culture as a way to understand how the black community may have unwittingly helped push the emotional disorders of African American men further underground.

As daring and explosive as Nathan McCall’s Makes Me Wanna Holler, Standing In the Shadows challenges both the African American community and the psychiatric community to end the silent suffering of black men by taking responsibility for a problem that’s been ignored for far too long.

Priase

• "Not exactly a self-help book, Head’s volume is a wake-up call to African Americans, health care professionals and anyone concerned about the far-reaching consequences of depression."
  
  -Publisher's Weekly, August 30, 2004 Read the whole review (registration required)

• "Standing in the Shadows is a brave, unblinking look at what it is like to be an African American man with depression. John Head's insightful analysis of the connection between racism and this illness should be required reading for everyone who cares that African American men are often absent from their families, are in jails and prisons in disproportionate numbers, and die at an alarming rates from suicide.”

  -Cynthia Wainscott, Chair, National Mental Health Association

• "John Head deftly takes us on a personal and cultural journey into the nature of depression and the social stigmas that surround it. Standing in the Shadows is an insightful, compelling, and practical guide."

  -Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D., co-director, Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media.

• "This book does not haggle with statistics and scientific discoveries . . . .it literally keeps the topic of depression and black men honest by taking us through a progressive journey that helps us understand the real hurdles. Before you delve into any medical journal ... read this book first so that you will have a deeper understanding of the topic and develop a good foundation."

  -Donna Holland Barnes, Ph.D, resident and co-founder of the National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide and assistant professor in the department of psychiatry at Howard University.

• "Neither a polemic nor a weepy tell-all, Standing in the Shadows is a sobering look at what the world's most common mental illness is doing to a big chunk of our population - with well-researched words of hope and help for those men and the people who love them."

  -Tracy Thompson, author of The Beast: A Reckoning with Depression

• “John Head's Standing in the Shadows is a "must read" for the black man suffering from the lingering, tormenting blues and for anyone who knows him. Head makes the experience of depression real in heartfelt, well-crafted vignettes that give substance to his demand that we acknowledge, name, understand, and do something to ease the psychic pain that many black men suffer in relative silence.”

  -Sandra C. Walker, MD, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst

"Tom Wolfe's literary warning that you can never go home again isn't merely about whether the people back home will accept you. It's also about whether "home" will still be there waiting for you. The Jackson, Ga., I knew wasn't still there. It isn't just a superficial transformation brought on by the arrival of McDonald's and other franchises that make the town look a lot like every other town. It goes deeper than that. A drug house flourished across the street from my mother's home for months until the police finally busted it and the city boarded it up. Jackson was in the news recently as the center of an auto insurance scam, with several local residents arrested. The town is changing with the times, and so are the people."

In 2000, it was selected as the best memoir at the Georgia Writers Inc.'s 36th Annual Georgia Author of the Year Awards.

Read an excepts: "Fish from the Sky" and "The Inspection,"

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Praise forWe Were the Land’s

• "In the sounds of John Head’s working hammer, you hear the echoes of a family’s past. It’s a beautiful story, lovingly told, about the South and race, the farm and the Fitches, about sweet-smelling mimosas and Grandpa calling out to Grandma, "Hey, Lady!" One man said of the old house, ‘I’d tear it down.’ I’m glad John Head didn’t do it. His journey into the family hearth will stay with me for a long time."–Gary M. Pomerantz, author of Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: A Saga of Race and Family

• "With words as sweet as honeysuckle, John Head unfolds the tapestry of his family’s history and the land they dug to sustain their future. Reading his words of fortitude, quiet strength, and reverence for life, family and community, we all pilgrimage to the place of our birth."–Evelyn Coleman, author of What a Woman’s Gotta Do and White Socks Only