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Critical Praise for Man in the Mirror: John Howard Griffin and the Story of Black Like Me

• John Howard Griffin was one the most remarkable people I have ever encountered. He was one of those guys that comes along once or twice in a century and lifts the hearts of the rest of us. Man in the Mirror brings justice to this hero of justice.

  — Studs Terkel

• In this beautiful and stirring portrait of John Howard Griffin, Robert Bonazzi has given readers a sensitive and poetic understanding of the moral pilgrimage of one of the seminal writers and prophetic figures of our century. Bonazzi's portrait is more than a fine literary work. It is also a gift of grace to a nation more racially divided than at any time since Griffin was alive. Those of us whose lives were changed by Griffin's act of witness will, of course, be grateful; but it is the generation now in school and college that will be most thankful for this work, for it is they who will be making the next pilgrimage.

  — Jonathan Kozol

• We enter again into the remarkable journey of this courageous white man willing to become a black man. Man in the Mirror is a book for generations to come.

  — Brother Patrick Hart

Reviews

• Chicago Tribune

  Readers familiar with Griffin's work will find this an insightful and informative volume; teachers of American literature and history should positively rejoice. Man in the Mirror fills so many gaps in the story, and provides such detailed biographical preambles and postscripts, that the book is surely destined to become the critical resource of choice.

• National Catholic Reporter

  Bonazzi's exploration, sensitive and profound, marks him as one who understood that John Howard Griffin's actions went far beyond the popular notion of daring to slice into the underbelly of American racism. This beautifully written study of Griffin and his transformation, in its seductive way, makes one believe that the journey of one man can be the journey of a people. It is a journey eminently worth taking. -- Bishop Cyprian Lamar Rowe, in the National Catholic Reporter

• The Times of London

  Black Like Me is considered a classic on race. Robert Bonazzi's critical study of Griffin's experiment, Man in the Mirror fills in Griffin's back-story and is an excellent contextual companion. -- Bernadine Evaristo, in The Times of London

• Library Journal

  This riveting account should revive interest in Griffin's work. Recommended for all libraries.

• Publishers Weekly

  Through interviews and close readings, a portrait of Griffin as a compassionate man deeply committed to social justice through love emerges.... Bonazzi's book gives us a fascinating portrait of an important personality in American history.

• Booklist

  Robert Bonazzi takes readers behind that mirror for a fascinating look at a remarkable person, and it is the life and character of Griffin that makes this book irresistible and stimulates curiosity in the humane concerns of Black Like Me.

• Kirkus Reviews

  An earnest, adulatory discussion of the classic exposé of racism (Black Like Me) and the memorable life of its author, John Howard Griffin. Bonazzi, who published some of Griffin's writings at his Latitudes Press and is possibly the world's only Griffin scholar, deserves credit for explaining, albeit briefly, the fascinating events that shaped Griffin's character as a crusader against racism. . . . The bulk of Bonazzi's tome is a summary of that work, with copious quotes from Griffin's own words, which remind one of just how skillful a prose stylist he was. . . . In quoting from other of Griffin's works and playing up his intellectually rigorous Catholicism (he was friends with Thomas Merton and Jacques Maritain), Bonazzi places Black Like Me within a lifelong quest to understand and share with others his religious ideals of humanitarianism and mercy. . . . .

• The Texas Observer

  Griffin's quest was to find the divine within and to love his enemies without exception. As a nation, we are blessed to have such a selfless interpreter of cultures born in our midst. Bonazzi's Man in the Mirror goes a long way towards helping us to understand such unlikely saintliness.

• Texas Books in Review

  On one hand, the awful racist days of the 1950s and 1960s produced attacks by police dogs, riots, assassinations and lynchings. On the other, it was a time when humans of good will had clear goals and strong leaders. African-Americans could easily identify the targets, for the evils of Jim Crow and segregationist laws and enforcers were clear. And it was time when white Texans of conscience like John Howard Griffin did not remain silent. In these ambiguous days before the millennium, nothing seems very clear, but books like Bonazzi's Man in the Mirror help us to return to the intellectual and moral issues that compelled people like Griffin and help us to understand the distance between then and now. --Mark Busby, in Texas Books in Review