What is the primary setting in the memoir, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker?

The United States of America, with its extensive history of tension between blacks and whites, is the primary broad strokes setting for the narrative, and for the author's contemplations of the nature and interactions of blackness and whiteness. The author's contention is that America, as both a place and a concept, is deeply and thoroughly infused with racist attitudes and values to the point where being a black person in America is systemically and inevitably both dangerous and constrictive.