RAMCAT READS #7
Bell, Bernard W.,
ed. Clarence Major and His Art: Portraits
of an African American Postmodernist. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2001. This examination of an underappreciated writer and visual
artist should be read along with Keith Byerman's The Art and Life of Clarence Major . Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 2012.
Chang, Jeff. Who We
Be: The Colorization of America .New York: St. Martin's Press, 2014. Chang's lively blending of nonfiction
narratives and multicultural visuals, a brief history of writing performance,
lends some credibility to the belief that "the tragedy of life is that you
never know all the things you're supposed to know when you're supposed to know
them"( 345).
Franklin, John Hope. George
Washington Williams: A Biography. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Franklin's book is a fine example of cultural memory at work. Williams (1849-1891) was the author of A
History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880; Negroes as Slaves, as
Soldiers, and as Citizens (1882) and A
History of Negro Troops in the War of the Rebellion (1887). In a remarkable gesture of putting Williams
in conversation with Joseph Conrad's Heart
of Darkness and Mark Twain's King
Leopold's Soliloquy, Franklin appended Williams's open letter to King
Leopold II of Belgium (1890), a most "eloquent indictment," and "A Report on the Proposed Congo
Railway" (1890). Williams set the
bar for later generations of scholar activists.
When Williams died on August 2, 1891, "he had achieved the full
stature of a real nineteenth century American" (240), and Franklin
concludes he "was one of the small heroes of this world; but it is well
that one should not try to make more of him then what he was ---a flawed but
brilliant human being" (241). In
this book we find a perfect matching of subject and object, for Franklin
himself was a consummate American
historian and a brilliant, responsible human being.
Izzo, David Garrett,
ed. Movies in the Age of Obama: The Era
of Post-Racial and Neo-Racist Cinema. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
2015. These essays address how Obama's
presidency "spurred a cultural shift, notably in music, television, and
film" and their arguments should be compared with those made by essays in Black Hollywood Unchained: Commentary on the
State of Black Hollywood. Chicago: Third World Press, 2015. Both collections are contemporary supplements
for essays collected in Black American Cinema (New York:
Routledge, 1993), edited by Manthia Diawara.
These three collections tempt us to think we might be much enlightened
by a collection of essays on how African
and Asian films challenge the adequacy of films produced in Australia, Europe
and the Americas.
Smith, Patricia. Blood
Dazzler: Poems. Minneapolis: Coffee
House Press, 2008. Smith's accomplished
explorations of aesthetic gestures occasioned by Hurricane Katrina should be
read in the company of Hurricane Blues:
Poems about Katrina and Rita (Cape Girardeau, MO: Southeast Missouri State
University Press, 2006), edited by Philip C. Kolin and Susan Swartwout and Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2009), edited by Camille T. Dungy.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. December 23, 2015
