Ramcat Reads #9 February
22, 20167
Lee, Steven S. The
Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.
Groundbreaking in its exposing of the abject poverty of the
white/black binary, Lee's study of
aesthetics and politics outlines new directions for inquiry about which
cultures are giving palpable shape to which kinds of revolution. The new territory to be examined , as Lee keenly
recognizes, may demand that we redefine "avant-garde" in African and
Asian terms and relegate the pompous West to a subaltern position in our
tentative conclusions about what world revolution entails.
Michaeli, Ethan. The Defender: How the Legendary Black
Newspaper Changed America. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
The phrase "how X changed America" is cliché-code for
"this book will serve well as a smokescreen for bloody flaws in the
constitution and evolving character of the United States of America ." This is not to imply that books having the
phrase in their subtitles are themselves flawed. On the contrary, many of them are damned
good. But we must not be taken in by the
rhetorical gestures of mainstream publishers to assure readers that the process
of change merits great praise.
In the case of
Michaeli's The Defender, it is apt to
say the book is meticulous, necessary, and rewarding for people who have the
discipline to read more than a tweet.
After reading 534 well-written pages, it is rewarding to read Michaeli's
crowning assertion: "Working at The
Defender allowed me to see the truth about America, that 'race' is a
pernicious lie that permeates our laws and customs, revived in each generation
by entrenched interests that threaten to undermine the entire national
enterprise, just as it is challenged in each generation by a courageous few who
believe that this nation can truly become a bastion of justice and
equality" (535).
The Defender did
not change America. It was one of many uses of African American literacy in our
endless war with forms of dehumanization in our nation. Let us give due credit to Michaeli for
constructing a history which can retard the velocity of disremembering.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
