A Thousand Ways to Die : The True Cost of Violence on Black Life in America

A deeply personal exploration of the generational impact of guns on the Black experience in America

A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, almost died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter Nola asked her daddy why, he realized that in order to be honest with her, he had to confront the weight that almost killed him ? the weight of being a Black man in America; the weight of bearing witness as a journalist to constant Black death; the weight of a family history that includes enslavement, lynching, the great migration, the also toxic racism of the North, and gun violence that took two of his great uncles, a grandfather, a step brother and two cousins.

In this powerful narrative, Lee weaves three strands: the long, bloody history of African Americans and guns; his work as a griot of gun violence, stalking death from New Orleans to Chicago, to Charleston and Buffalo and tallying the cost and the riches generated by the gun industry, legal and illegal; and finally, his own life, from almost being caught up in gun violence as a young man to bearing witness to his ancestors Middle Passage in Ghana, to facing the challenges of representing his people accurately in a mainly white, often hostile media world, and most importantly, to celebrating the strength of his family and community.

In A Thousand Ways to Die, Lee answers Nola and all that seek a more just America. He shares the truth of the Black experience, but he also celebrates the beauty and resilience that is her legacy.