| Author | Message | ||
     Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 406 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, I'm in the middle of reading Race, Sex and Suspicion: The Myth of the Black Male by D. Marvin Jones. A question struck me in the middle of the first chapter, is there a REAL need for non-fiction AA titles today? I'm not speaking of non-fiction titles that are based on a person's life or an historical event. I'm speaking of books that are based on an author's opinion of how, what, why, and where things should be or how people should think. I'm a grown A man. I've been around a while, so what I think or how I feel about certain issues are already formed in concrete, its not likely to change. All of these books will either piss me off, or shore up an opinion I already have, so on a personal level, how can any of these books enlighten me on anything? I don't believe they can. Second, especially when the book is centered on an issue of the black community, and with me being black and living in the community, is the author really wanting me as his ideal audience or white folk? The author can not tell me anything that I don't already know. In most cases the author(s) is preaching to the choir. If the black folks that are living the subjects of these books are already in the know--so they don't need to read these books; then there's the hoity-toity black folks who are busy trying to assimilate and pretending poor black folks don't exist--so they sho ain't going to be reading these books; then the white folks that don't know about black folks either don't want to know--so they aint going to be reading these books, and the white folks the should know but are too damn stupid to realize, don't read ANY books--needless to say they ain't going to be checking these books out from the library. And so who's left to read these books? *eyebrow raised* And if the numbers for these books are fixed, is there a need for them? | ||
| Abm "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Abm Post Number: 2925 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thumper, I hear you. And to some degree, agree. However, the "Black community" really is an oxymoron. There really are MANY communities of people who happened to be predominately African American. And they aren't all the same. They have different economic, political and familial structures and dynamics. The "Black community" in South Central LA is materially different from the one in the South Bronx NYC and from the one in Little Rock Arkansas. So, think if the books you decry fail it is because they often fail to honor how our communities differentiate. (“WOW! A Thumper sighting on the...”Thumper’s Corner Discussion Board”. Whoever could have predicated THAT?”) | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2254 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hi Thumper! How's your puppy doing? What did you name her? In response to your question, I would categorize these non fictions books you speak of as sociological studies. They are more like text books and the target audience of these books are the peers of the people who write them. There should always be books in print that people can use for future reference and research when they want to pursue a subject in depth. Also, I don't know that the black community can be defined in terms of geography. It is more a class thing. The poor are the same all over and those higher up on the economic scale all have the common denominator of being materialistic status seekers, no matter where they live. | ||
| Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 408 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, ABM: You wrote, "WOW! A Thumper sighting on the...”Thumper’s Corner Discussion Board”. Whoever could have predicated THAT?" Beats me. *smile* You have a point about the community. But, lets say that these books DID focus on one community, what real value would this book have and who would be its intended audience? While I will concede that you have a point, I have to ask, what else needs to be said that haven't already be said? Cynique: I am doing fine, thank you. Well, I was leaning towards Sasha, but now, I'm thinking on the name Porgy. Here's a few of the latest pictures of the litter. I haven't picked out the puppy yet. I think I still got a couple of weeks before I can.   My favorite picture  I hear what you're saying about the black community not being just about geography and more of a class thing. But isn't people just people? I mean, the difference between a son of a bitch with money, and a son of a bitch without money, is the money. He's still a son of a bitch. | ||
| Steve_s AALBC .com Platinum Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 88 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
This a complex question. Frankly, the Marvin Jones book would not interest me because just by the title alone I can tell that it's intended for a specific readership which does not include me. On the other hand, Debra Dickerson's "The End of Blackness" may not interest me that much either, but I noticed that the NY Times gave it two reviews, which I think may be insightful in trying to answer the question posed. Gerald Early, in his review of the Dickerson book, points out that nonfiction books by public intellectuals like Dickerson, bell hooks, Henry L. Gates, et al, appeal to "distinct factions" of both black and white readers. But his second observation is that Dickerson's book has "another layer of significance," which is that it's also an "advice book." And then he describes the popularity (or perhaps, the neurotic appeal) of self-help books of all kinds in this country, from David Walker's "Appeal" and E. Franklin Frazier, to The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, and Stop the Insanity, or whatever. Personally, the advice aspect is not what interests me in AA nonfiction books. The other NY Times review was written by Janet Maslin, who reads the Dickerson book as a personal memoir and an indictment of white society, which is probably a valid way of reading it and might indeed interest me. But I think there is an experiential gap in that Early has read many more books of this type than Maslin (although they are two different individuals). ......................... Early's review: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02E5D61039F932A35751C0A9629C8B6 3&n=Top%2FFeatures%2FBooks%2FBook%20Reviews Maslin's review: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9402EFDF1338F93AA15752C0A9629C8B6 3&n=Top%2fFeatures%2fBooks%2fBook%20Reviews | ||
| Abm "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Abm Post Number: 2929 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Cynique, I think you'd find MANY interesting differences between poor/wealthy AA Californians and poor/wealthy AA Louisianans...if you try. Thumper, I agree there appear a surfeit of the books you describe. Sometimes, though, the best way to identify, understand and solicit empathy for a broader issue is to view it from more microscopic, personal perspective. One of my favorite examples of such is Alex Kotlowitz's "There Are No Children Here", a book about two black boys growing up in the tough Chicago projects. Although most reasonably informed people are familiar with the basic issues identified in the book, the personal travails and triumphs of the boys provide authentic substance/texture/perspective to those issues. Plus, the readers encouraged to 'root' for 2 REAL innocent boys, not some indistinct, amorphous ‘class’ of people. And although Kotlowitz’s book was about 2 Black kids, many non-AA’s bought/lauded it (though I should concede its author being White likely contributed to that). Perhaps if the books you describe were scaled down in scope and similarly intimate, they might resonate more with readers as well. | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2255 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
ABM says: "I think you'd find MANY interesting differences between poor/wealthy AA Californians and poor/wealthy AA Louisianans...if you try." Cynique says: Help a sisa out. Aside from their dialects, what are some of these many differences. Thumpers says: "I hear what you're saying about the black community not being just about geography and more of a class thing. But isn't people just people? I mean, the difference between a son of a bitch with money, and a son of a bitch without money, is the money. He's still a son of a bitch." Cynique says: Yep. Our black ethnicity is what connects us, our economic class is what separates us and a son of a bitch knows no color or class. Steve, I agree that a lot of these books are multi-faceted in their genre. | ||
| Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 409 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, ABM: I hear what you're saying and totally agree with you, when you say, "Sometimes, though, the best way to identify, understand and solicit empathy for a broader issue is to view it from more microscopic, personal perspective." But, if you read my original post carefully, you would see that There Are No Children Here would not fit the description of the books that I am complaining about. The book is about two boys, and not some blowhard talking just to hear himself talk. Cynique: I have to disagree with your statement: Our black ethnicity is what connects us, our economic class is what separates us and a son of a bitch knows no color or class. Yeah, in the every man is my brother type of world your statement would be true, but there is more than simply economic class that seperates us, as a people. I honestly believe that RACE is what seperates us as black people. | ||
| Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 410 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, Steve S: How are you? *smile* Thanks for the links to the reviews. I have to agree with Early's points on who these types of books are written for. I have no opinion of the book itself since I haven't read it. But, I have to wonder, is the intellectual so far removed from people that what he/she has to say is irrelevant? | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2256 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thumper, what I meant was that black people are connected by their color but they are separated by their class divisions. Race is what separates us as a people from whites. | ||
| Abm "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Abm Post Number: 2930 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thumper, Thanks for clarify your point. I too regret literary “blowhard” phenomenon you cite. Cynique, I think it all depends on to what degree/level you want to understand/appreciate the finer points of how/why people live as they do. For example, po’ foks in Chicago often face the prospects of not being able to pay exorbitant natural gas bills and, thus, often suffer having their gas services disconnected. Consequences of that are severe, even potentially deadly: malnourished children, increase incidents of disease/injury due to exposure, fires from risky, makeshift heating sources, etc. Po’ residents of Sunny Los Angeles are less inclined to suffer those particular concerns. And Black children of Harlem, NYC and Chicago have much greater rates of asthma than do their southern counterparts (due, perhaps, to an assortment of conditions including urban areas having higher concentrations manmade antigens, decaying housing stock, lead paint, pest/rodents, etc.) Yes, they may all be poor Blacks, thus face racism, poverty, etc. Still, how they are living may be substantially different. So while I’ll agree the problems often have similar sources and consequences, if you thoroughly explore these matters, you may discover and even appreciate that “GOD [truly] is in the details.” | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2258 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Jeeze. Sorry I asked. I was not talking about the effect, I was talking about the cause. All poor people are alike because they have little or no income. | ||
| Yvettep "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 331 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: |
They are more like text books and the target audience of these books are the peers of the people who write them. I agree very much with this. In many fields you must publish books early and often--first, in order to get tenure, then to get promotion. Many of the big "names" are already full profs, so I'm not as sure of their motives but still believe these books by academics to be for other academics. Also, with the closing of many academic presses, I think more scholars are going the more popular route. Even with academic presses there is pressure to appeal to a "broader" audience. In some fields I think this may be filtering down to pressure grad students to tailor their dissertation for such purposes--even as they are writing them, instead of as a goal for post-PhD revision as once was the case. | ||
| Yvettep "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 332 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
Oh, and of course a large segment of the academic-peer audience in most fields is, of course, made up of Whites. | ||
| Steve_s AALBC .com Platinum Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 89 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello, Thumper. How have you been? Thanks for the feedback. I'm already familiar with Gerald Early, I just recently read his little book about Motown, "One Nation Under a Groove," which is not a history but rather a really fascinating socio-cultural analysis of Berry Gordy, the Motown "myth," and a lot more. So his (essentially negative) review of a book like Debra Dickerson's would usually carry more weight with me than Maslin's positive review, however, the judges of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award must feel similarly to Maslin because I noticed that they've selected it as a finalist for this year's award. Another example would be The Failures of Integration by Sheryll Cashin, also a finalist for this year's H/W Legacy Award. Last year I read Charles Ogletree's "All Deliberate Speed," part history of Brown v. Board and part memoir (which gets into reparations, the Tulsa lawsuit, etc.). After finishing it, I checked the NY Times for a review and found it reviewed together with 2 other recent books about Brown, "Silent Covenants" by Derrick Bell and the Sheryll Cashin book. The reviewer made some distinctions between her book and the other two. Here's an example: "both Bell and Ogletree place their educational emphasis on charter schools within the public system or independent and parochial schools outside it. . . Cashin is left defending the ever more elusive goal of integration, and it is no easy task. . . As for Bell and Ogletree, they lost the integration religion long ago, somewhere on the potholed road from Topeka to today." http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C04E1D71F3DF935A25756C0A9629C8B6 3&n=Top%2fFeatures%2fBooks%2fBook%20Reviews So by choosing her book as a finalist for the award I would say that the judges are making a statement. I've seen it in the bookstore and she seems to have the knowledge of a policy insider, but judging by the back cover alone, she also has some opinions about the need for integration on a social level. This'll sound glib, but there's no bigger intellectual than Dizzy Gillespie. So when a book or some music is really saying something, it's never irrelevant in my opinion, even if it's what people don't want to hear. | ||
| Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 413 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, Cynique: When I say that race is what seperates us as black people, I'm not talking about being seperated by white folks but the racism within the black community. Although folks would say that its a thing about class, it's not--it all boils down to race. It's not about the haves and have nots, but which black folks act like, aspire to be, talk like WHITE FOLKS, especially white conservatives, and those of us who don't. Last night I was watching Primetime Live. The subject of the program was grandmothers raising their grandchildren that were abandon by their parents. At the end, the inserted pieces of a speech Bill Cosby made last year, when he decided to bring to task the "low rent" portion of the black community; the mothers who give their kids the unpronounceable, unspellable names, teenage pregnancy, the dead beat absent fathers and the women who chooses to lay down with them and have even more kids with them, etc. While I agree with many of the points he made, it still rubbed me the wrong way. With images of poor old black women struggling to raise a generation of kids that they should not be raising still in my head, hearing Cosby rant, visions of that $100 million that he gave Spellman danced in my head. How many grandmothers and poor children could that money have helped? And then there's the implication that that contribution made, "For all you black girls this money is to help you in your future...as long as adopt the ways that will make you an instrument to uplift the race. In other words, act and live as white as you can. Because it is important that white folks know that we are as civilized as they are and therefore worthy of their acceptance." | ||
| Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 414 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, Steve S: I am doing fine. *big smile* | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2263 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I understand where you are coming from, Thumper, but to me, trying to better yourself and move up the ecomonic ladder is not necessarily a matter of emulating white folks in order to earn their acceptance, it's a matter of wanting to enjoy the fruits of your labor by leading a comfortable life. | ||
| Steve_s AALBC .com Platinum Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 92 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: |
Hi, the question of an 'ideal audience' for literature and music in this culture which Thumper raised in the first post may not be as heavy as the serious survival issues he mentioned later, but it has a history so we study it and learn from it. bell hooks covers some of the same ground in her book as Marita Golden. I only read one chapter, but personally, her book speaks to me more and I would say it's more intellectual rather than spiritual or inspirational. But she was on Book TV and said this about the audience she writes for: LAMB: You say in your book that most black writers write for white audiences. HOOKS: Well, I think that most of us -- we live in a culture that is not full of literacy. I think that one of the great myths of our culture is that everybody can read and write and that, in fact, when it comes to selling books and writing books, I mean, most people have a sense of an audience out there that is a book buying audience. And even though we've proven in the last few years that black people constitute a big book buying audience, we simply by shared numbers, we can never be the book buying audience that white consumers constitute. And I think as more people know that, it's easier to pitch a book towards a white audience in your thinking and how you write and the language that you use. http://www.booknotes.org/Transcript/?ProgramID=1278&QueryText=bell+hooks Gerald Early's book about Motown caught my interest about 5 years ago. I was just expecting a book about music, which it is, but it's really based on references to books by authors like: E. Franklin Frazier, Lorraine Hansberry, Zora Neale Hurston, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ralph Ellison, and many others, most of whom I had not read at the time. Now about 200 books later, I went back and read it and understood it better than I could have. What I got out of it is also related to the question of 'audience,' which is that Motown was a crossover music and that Gordy specifically marketed to whites as well as blacks with an astute sense of what Early describes as each group's specific psychologies. I wouldn't be surprised if it was related to Gordy's natural interest in jazz, but, for instance, it explains how he got r&b music into the 33 rpm format like pop, he emphasized the girl groups, promoted Diana Ross to lead singer over Florence Ballard because the synthetic quality of her voice and sex appeal were frankly more attractive to (some) white males (his interpretation). Here are some excerpts, beginning with the scathing quote from E. Franklin Frazier (of course, you may not agree): ... Since the black bourgeoisie live largely in a world of make-believe, the masks which they wear to play their sorry roles conceal the feelings of inferiority and of insecurity and the frustrations that haunt their inner lives. -- E. Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie (1957) The family myth resonated in two ways for Motown. First, as applied to an ostensibly black family, the Motown myth was particularly pleasing to blacks for whom "family" and "unity" are nearly fetishistic affectations fraught with political and metaphysical meaning generated by a memory (nay, consciousness) of oppression. Nothing so warms the heart of the average African-American than an acknowledgement -- philistine and sentimental as the current spate of Afrocentric greeting cards or gripping and compelling as John Wideman's memoirs -- of the wondrous necessity of family. It must be remembered that in 1959, the year Motown started, Lorraine Hansberry's play about black family life, A Raisin in the Sun, burst upon the scene. That play, which combines the worst of a Hallmark greeting card with the best of Russian drama, has endured as well as Motown's music. Secondly, the family myth meant that Berry Gordy was not merely a CEO, a boss, a leader, or even a visionary but that he was a father, an older brother, an uncle, a coach, a teacher, a guardian, an authority figure motivated by something other than making money from his acts. And the acts, of course, became his children, his brothers and sisters, his wards, his companions and not simply his employees. . . In short, the paternalism of the early years, and the implicit sense of racial uplift and "community" -- fostered by the company's own bourgeois-motivated and practically rendered need in a racist society to have an identity of virtue and racial "committment" -- undoubtedly fostered the sense among many that Motown was not a privately owned enterprise which, in fact, it was, but some sort of cooperative venture. For a time, Gordy was able to manipulate brilliantly both his black and white audiences by having Motown as vaguely a "race company" satisfy certain nationalistic yearnings for blacks while presenting it as an "assimilationist success story" for whites. He balanced, through his family image, the neurotic need of his black audience for uplift and the equally neurotic need for accomodationist outreach for his white audience. . . E. Franklin Frazier, in his Black Bourgeoisie (1957), suggested that black business enterprise as a "social myth has been one of the main elements in the world of 'make-believe' which the black bourgeoisie has created to compensate for its feeling of inferiority in a white world dominated by business enterprise." A song such as "Funky President" and a good deal of James Brown's repertoire (a song like "It's a Man's World" or "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World," cut in 1964, certainly suggests that Brown saw masculinity tied to material achievements and capitalist well-being) counters Frazier's view by proffering, first, that the black fantasy about black-owned business was something more than a middle-class make-believe of the race, if Brown's popularity as an artist is any indication; and second, that although this view of business may have been a sign of inferiority, it was also a sign of secular or profane aspiration for a subjugated people that may be as noble in its reach as it is tragic in some aspects of its unreality or shallowness. Perhaps this is one of the points that Zora Neale Hurston was trying to make with Joe Starks and Logan Killicks, two different types of male aspirants for bourgeois respectability, in her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. It meant a great deal to his black fans when James Brown became the first black performer to by a Lear Jet, buy radio stations, cut deals with record companies, control entirely his stage shows, and act, finally, as the complete and magisterial auteur of his own business mission as if, as a business property, he had sprung fully from his own imagination. For a people who feel that their history, in part, is and always has been a long line of business abuses and humiliations and thefts on the part of whites, Brown's stature as musician/businessman and as conveyor of middle-class ambition is of no small measure. . . "Funky President" was clearly a song that one could hardly imagine any white rock or country artist making or white audience consider interesting, as the American Dream of success is contextualized a bit differently for whites. Their assumptions about it and their cynicism over its emptiness tend not to match black assumptions and cynicism but to run parellel to them, as these assumptions and cynicism represent two distinct forms of a common nationalist mythology. This is largely because blacks and whites tend to see the community and the individual in almost oppositional ways: The white sees the individual's empowerment as a safeguard against the community's tyranny; blacks see the community's empowerment as the safeguard of the individual's dignity and fate. . . We might understand Berry Gordy and the making of Motown by understanding that the connections between commerce, the virtue of accumulating wealth, and African-American life and culture is deep, intricate, remarkably philistine, and silly, as E. Franklin [Frazier] has suggested, yet remarkably compelling. ..... Another example of musical opinion (again, you may disagree) from And So I Sing: African American Divas of Opera and Concert by Rosalyn M. Story (great book by a violinist currently with the Dallas Opera and Fort Worth Symphony): Nonetheless, the parties continued and succeeded in pulling together black and white movers and shakers of the age. Two of Van Vechten's most notable guests penned musical works that permanently altered the course of black participation in classical music (specifically opera), and provided work and greatly needed exposure for the black diva and her male counterpart. In 1934 Van Vechten gave a party for composer Virgil Thompson to organize support for his opera Four Saints in Three Acts, which, at the composer's insistence, was cast completely with black singers. And George Gershwin, who often accompanied Van Vechten's guests with Broadway tunes on the piano, composed Porgy and Bess in 1935, an opera based on the DuBose and Dorothy Heyward play of 1927 -- also for blacks. Both operas were monumentally important. Four Saints presented before a large white audience blacks performing serious roles in an opera that had nothing to do with color, thus negating the notion that blacks could play nothing other than blacks. And Porgy and Bess provided opera with a black American heroine to rank alongside Carmen, Tosca, and Aida. To be sure, blacks had been seen in opera before . . . But for the most part, white American audiences in the early 1930s were unfamiliar with (and perhaps not willing to take seriously) the black singer as opera star until Four Saints and Porgy. And certainly no approval, either critical or box office, could compete in the long run with the wholesale endorsement of black singers by America's greatest composers. Both Thompson and Gershwin were openly drawn to black culture, black music, and black ethos. And implicit in their works was an undeniable tribute to and respect for the quality of black singers. (The role of Bess is example enough. Gershwin wrote the part feeling sure he could find a black woman who could handle its Verdian level of difficulty.) With Four Saints in Three Acts and Porgy and Bess, black singers made the most widely witnessed transition from concert work and black musical theater to grand opera, and the image of a black opera singer became not only acceptable, but in some circles desirable. | ||
| Snakegirl Newbie Poster Username: Snakegirl Post Number: 10 Registered: 05-2005 Rating: N/A |
Steve, I don't care what anybody says. Of the SUPREMES...Diana Ross was the only one with "STAR" quality. Anybody could see that. Florence had a big voice and could sing very well. But she wasn't "DISTINCTIVE". I dare anyone to put on Diana Ross record and say that there's someone else who sounds like her. Nobody does. As well...Ross exuded incredible charisma and personality and DRIVE that the others lacked. She shared Gordy's determination to shout down the sky. Therefore, he RIGHTLY put her where she belonged---UP FRONT. It's also no secret that he was madly in love with her at one time (the beginning) and greatly seduced by her---Diana told the other girls during one of their first auditions for Motown before they even graduated high school: "I'm going to get him". She was really my kinda girl. |
