Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon (1925-1961) had a profound impact on the black identity and critical race theory. Fanon’s masterwork is now available in a new translation (2008) that updates its language for a new generation of readers. Translated from the French by Richard Philcox, Black Skin, White Masks continues its influence on civil rights, anticolonial, and black consciousness movements internationally. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history. Frantz Fanon was born in Martinique in 1925. During World War II Fanon enlisted in the French army and was initially sent with allied forces to Casablanca, Morocco, yet was transferred to France where he fought and was wounded in the battle at Colmar, in northern France. After the war Fanon studied medicine in France, where he specialized in psychiatry. It was while studying in France that Fanon wrote his first book, entitled Black Skin, White Masks (1952), a study of the black subjugation in the western white world. Sent to a hospital in Algeria, he found his sympathies turning toward the Algerian Nationalist Movement, which he later joined. He is considered this century's most important theorist of the African struggle for independence.
