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I Take My Coffee Black

Reflections on Tupac, Musical Theater, Faith, and Being Black in America

Contributors

By Tyler Merritt

Foreword by Jimmy Kimmel

Formats and Prices

Price

$26.00

Price

$33.00 CAD

In the wake of his deeply powerful viral videos (“Before You Call the Cops” and “Walking While Black”), Tyler Merritt shares his experiences as a black man in America with truth, humor, and poignancy.

Tyler Merritt’s video “Before You Call the Cops” has been viewed millions of times. He’s appeared on Jimmy Kimmel and Sports Illustrated and has been profiled in the New York Times. The viral video’s main point—the more you know someone, the more empathy, understanding, and compassion you have for that person—is the springboard for this book. By sharing his highs and exposing his lows, Tyler welcomes us into his world in order to help bridge the divides that seem to grow wider every day.

In I Take My Coffee Black, Tyler tells hilarious stories from his own life as a black man in America. He talks about growing up in a multi-cultural community and realizing that he wasn’t always welcome, how he quit sports for musical theater (that’s where the girls were) to how Jesus barged in uninvited and changed his life forever (it all started with a Triple F.A.T. Goose jacket) to how he ended up at a small Bible college in Santa Cruz because he thought they had a great theater program (they didn’t). Throughout his stories, he also seamlessly weaves in lessons about privilege, the legacy of lynching and sharecropping and why you don’t cross black mamas. He teaches readers about the history of encoded racism that still undergirds our society today.

By turns witty, insightful, touching, and laugh-out-loud funny, I Take My Coffee Black paints a portrait of black manhood in America and enlightens, illuminates, and entertains—ultimately building the kind of empathy that might just be the antidote against the racial injustice in our society.

  • “A sad, happy, moving, troubling, inspirational, humorous and brutal account of the people and experiences that formed this exceptionally well-formed man... (Tyler Merritt) … subtly and kindly reminds us of how much we have in common and that assumptions are made by fools.”
     
    Jimmy Kimmel
  • “Stunning.”
    Publishers Weekly

On Sale
Sep 14, 2021
Page Count
320 pages
Publisher
Worthy Books
ISBN-13
9781546029410

Praise

  • “A sad, happy, moving, troubling, inspirational, humorous and brutal account of the people and experiences that formed this exceptionally well-formed man… (Tyler Merritt) … subtly and kindly reminds us of how much we have in common and that assumptions are made by fools.”
     
    Jimmy Kimmel
  • “Stunning.”
    Publishers Weekly

Tyler Merritt

About the Author

Tyler Merritt is an actor, musician, comedian, and activist behind The Tyler Merritt Project. Raised in Las Vegas, he has always had a passion for bringing laughter, grace, and love into any community he is a part of. His film credits include Netflix’s Outer Banks, Disney/Marvel’s Falcon and the Winter Soldier, NBC’s Young Rock, and A24’s The Inspection, to name a few. Tyler’s viral videos “Before You Call the Cops” and “Walking While Black” have been viewed by over 100 million people worldwide, with “Before You Call The Cops” being voted the most powerful video of 2020 by NowThis Politics. He is a cancer survivor who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

Learn more about this author