Porte Rouge: Your Degrees Won’t Keep You Warm at Night

Your Degrees Won’t Keep You Warm at Night: "

You’ll find these three words at the end of many of our entries; a somewhat awkward segue linking whatever Panama or I happened to write about that day to a question or series of questions asking for your thoughts about it. But, while it may just seem like an easy way to encourage discussion, the main purpose of “People of VSB…” is to remind us all that this VSB thing is a collective effort. Sure, the bylines may read “The Champ” or “Panama Jackson” or “Liz Burr,” but VerySmartBrothas.com is each and every one of us who finds their way to VSB each day.

It’s the dozens of night owls who somehow manage to log on to VSB at exactly 12:01 am EST every day of the week. It’s the grad student who half-jokingly says, “you know, I really should be studying. VSB needs to pay back my loans when I flunk out of school,” at the end of his 19th post-midnight comment. It’s the teacher who lists “yoga, VSB, and Starbucks” as her morning routine staples. It’s the accountant who minimizes his window whenever his boss walks past, and it’s the boss who goes back into her office after doing her “cubicle lap” and gets back on VSB. It’s the hundreds of thousands of comments (231,785 to be exact) accumulated since our beginning, a real community where names like Cheekie and WuDaMan and Miss T-Lee and Keisha Brown have real histories and real meanings.

Your Degrees Wont Keep You Warm at Night: The Very Smart Brothas Guide to Dating, Mating, and Fighting Crime is available for purchase at Amazon.com today.

It’s the perfect culmination of this unique discussion, this dogmatic engagement, this beautiful community we’re all a part of. It’s our salvo, our 235 page response to the idea that we — The Very Smart Brothas and Sistas — aren’t large enough or mobilized enough or motivated enough or smart enough or whatever enough to matter and make a sizable difference.

In the coming months there will be myriad articles, reviews, and stories about VSB — pieces that’ll undoubtedly shed light on what we’ve been doing over here to those who weren’t aware of our existence — but our success and continued collective growth lies with each and every one of us, and I implore you all to spread the word about us.

Buy the book. (Please!) Buy the book for a friend. (Or two! Or three!) Share the link to the book on Twitter or Facebook. Write a review. (Good or bad. All feedback is welcome.) Start an email chain. Jog and tell a friend. (I’d say “run,” but I think I’m asking for a lot already.)

Do what you can to let the world know about us — the great, great “People of VSB.”

***A few more things I need to get off of my chest.***

1. Like I mentioned before, each of you all had a hand in the creation of this book. But, there are a few people who went above and beyond with their help. These people include veteran VSB-ers Ivy Street, Gem of The Ocean (twitter.com/GemoftheOcean) and Miss Patterson (twitter.com/misspatterson) and friends of VSB Deesha Philyaw (twitter.com/DeeshaPhilyaw), Nikki “Coco” Nokes (nikkinokes.com), Sarah Huny Young (phattygirl.com), and Terryn Hall (kineticculture.com), and I’m greatly, greatly, greatly thankful for each of their contributions.

2. When you buy the book, you’re going to be sent the “real” version, but the preview that shows up when clicking on the “Look Inside” prompt on the Amazon page is 3 months and 17 content, structure, and aesthetic edits old.

Again, when you buy the book, you’re going to be sent the “real” version, but please don’t click on that God-awful preview because it just shows a very, very rough draft version of the book. (Yes, I know that sucks and no, there’s nothing I can do about it right now. Apparently it’ll fix itself in the next few weeks.)

3. If you haven’t already, please join our mailing list so you can get info about National VSB Day (coming Feb. 10th), free book excerpts, and more.

—The Champ