Losing My Cool

How a Father's Love and 15,000 Books Beat Hip-hop Culture

By: Thomas Chatterton Williams

Narrated by: Thomas Chatterton Williams

Unabridged, 7 hours

Read by the author

A pitch-perfect account of how hip-hop culture drew in the author and how his father drew him out again-with love, perseverance, and fifteen thousand books.

Incredible transformation

The whole book was great, but I wish I could have taken the last quarter of the book, his time in college and beyond, and lengthen that into its own book. I would love to hear TCW expound on his thoughts regarding his metamorphosis—how it impacts his family and his community and wisdom he would share with a younger Thomas going down the same path.

Phenomenal

As a racialized white person, I don't know what to say. His insight, though traveling through the lens of the Racialized Black experience, helped me to review how I think about my own self and the ways in which I limit myself because of the labels and signs we hang on ourselves. I'll be buying the paper version of this book ASAP.

Very revealing about life

Narrator was great. I love the honesty of the author; allowing us a view into the supposed coolness of black culture but then showing us how and why he relinquished it.

An unorthodox bildungsroman

Losing my cool is the story of Thomas Chatterton Williams’ youth and intellectual coming of age, against the backdrop of the hip hop culture of the 80’s and 90’s. This is a culture with which Williams identifies strongly for many of his formative years, but gradually comes to understand as prescribing a restrictive set of acceptable behaviours, desires and thought.

Ultimately Williams levels a firm critique of what he has experienced as the stultifying effects of these cultural expectations. This seems to be the primary source of enmity behind strongly negative reviews of the book. Don’t read Losing My Cool for the final word on hip hop culture, but rather as a compelling personal account of a racialized youth intertwined in this culture, but growing ultimately towards a life on terms of Williams’ own. Williams father features prominently as a deeply supportive figure who holds learning and true self-realisation (hard-won in his own case) as the highest ideals for his children.

A window into another culture

As a suburban 50 year old white woman I really appreciated the insider's view into the hip-hop culture. Fascinating and very easy to listen to. I have purchased the book for my kids because not only do you learn about hip-hop, there is also a lot of thought about how we choose to live our lives (not surprising given that the author is a philosopher).