JC
The Book Standard reviews Hung: A Meditation on the Measure of Black Men in America, by journalist Scott Poulson-Bryant. The book is to be released this October. This isn’t a glowing review — it sounds like the book doesn’t really offer much research on the subject, but anecdotal evidence instead. Smart title, though.

The title’s double entendre isn’t just sexual, explains the author, a founding editor of Vibe and now senior editor of the quarterly America. As used here, “hung” refers both to the legendary size of the African-American man’s penis and to the method used in the not-so-distant-past to lynch black men, often due to fears of miscegenation.

He serves up plenty of bawdy—and sometimes quite revealing—stories about penis size, interracial hang-ups, racist preconceptions and the massive entertainment business created around the mythology of the ultra-sexualized, nearly animalistic black male. His sources? Mostly his friends: some straight, some gay, a few famous, pretty much everybody with their names changed.