No comments about King's Dream (Icons of America).

2 comments about Booker T. Washington: Volume 2: The Wizard Of Tuskegee, 1901-1915 (Oxford Paperbacks).

1. Starts slowly when Harlan gets falls in love with the million+ Washington papers he had just cataloged and buries the reader in an avalanche of names, places, dates of Washington's early political career as the Presidential "referee" for an entire race.
   
   But Harlan redeems himself with chapters on Washington's dealings with his family, his school, his fund-raising, the world (he made three trips to Europe and was the most widely known African-American in the world), and his attack under mysterious and still unexplained circumstances in New York City.
   
   Harlan does a better job in this volume than the first of explaining the contradictions of Washington's leadership style ("separate but equal" accomodationism) in a region and country increasingly violent and dominated by white supremacist feelings. The ultimate end of Washington's other-cheek economic self-help style was racial exclusion and unimpeded trammeling of rights.
   
   His flaws must be acknowledged, but in the end the flaws magnify the worth of the man. I go back to that humble farm in western Virginia and the reconstructed "cabin" at the National Historic site (rougher and even more rudimentary than the mental image the word evokes) and imagine the journey that young boy made from slavery to freedom, from ignorance to education, from insignificance to leadership. From these beginnings to his end (at an early but aged 59), Booker T. Washington's greatness can not be doubted.



2. _I think you will make a mistake if you will let your mind dwell too much upon American prejudice, or any other racial prejudice. The thing is for one to get above such things. If one gets in the habit of continually thinking and talking about race prejudice, he soon gets gets to the point where he is fit for little that is worth doing. In the northern part of the United States, there are a number of colored people who make their lives miserable, because all their talk is about race prejudice_ Booker T. Washington in a letter to his daughter Portia then living and studying in Europe.(117)

   I am greatly impressed with this text, BOOKER T. WASINGTON, The Wizard of Tuskegee, 1901-1915. Professor Louis R. Harlan earned the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for History with this biography along with the Bancroft Prize and the Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association. The principle source is the Booker T Washington Papers in the Division of Manuscripts of the LIbrary of Congress, a rich, expanding collection of approximately a million letters, speeches, reports, newspaper clippings, and other documents. Professor Harlan is the editor of the published source that extends, currently, to 14 volumes. This material is available on-line in an Open-Book format at the site maintained by the University of Illinois Press (www.historycooperative.org/btw).

   This book begins in 1901, when Booker T. Washington at the age of forty-five was approaching the zenith of his fame and influence, and ends with his death in 1915. It is a biographical study in the sense that its focus is on the complex, enigmatic figure of Washington, the most powerful black minority-group boss of his time. It also recounts the inner life and struggles of the small black middle class in that generation once removed from slavery, as a coterie of college-bred black men and women challenged Washington's powerful coalition of northern, white philanthropists, southern white paternalists, black businessmen, and such members of the black professional class as he could attract to his side.

   Washington's wizardry - his skill of maneuver and ability to make the most of bad circumstances - was his strong point as a leader. His greatest failing was his inability to reverse the hard times for blacks during what whites called the Progressive Era. The same era which the historian Rayford Whittingham Logan (1897-1981) called the nadir of Afro-American history. As Washington's influence declined in his last years, W.E.B DuBois, a strong critic of Washington, and the founders at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) sought relief through the court system.

   It was this legal strategy of the NAACP in the 20th Century that culminated in the successful Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and it is Washington's work-ethic, self-help, self-improvement and particularly, style of accomomdation that have been forgotten or discredited. This text helps us remember what Washington accomplished, however, more importantly, Professor Harlan's meticulous investigations reveal that the character of Washington is difficult to articulate succintly.

   Washington's correspondence with the large donors to Tuskegee does not reveal a conspiracy, either large or small, to prepare Tuskegee's students to become wage-workers in the corporate structure. The typical donor sent his check rather than his advice.,...Washington's efforts at Tuskegee Institute were to train students to become independent small businessmen, farmers, and teachers rather than wage-earners or servants of white employers. At the same time, it is clear that Washington flattered and cajoled the very rich and never challenged the appropriateness of their status at the peak of the American success pyramid.

   Tuskegee became a mecca for not only Africans but West Indians and Asians. As his writings were translated into many foreign languages, he became the most famous black man in the world, and his fame drew foreigners to him like a magnet. All manner of men, American missionaries, European colonialists, Afican nationalists, Buddhist reformers, and Japanese modernizers sought to enlist his aid. On the one hand were whites who sought to aid in introducing plantation agriculture into colonial areas. On the other hand Africans and Asians hoped to find in Tuskegee industrial education and Washington's philosophy of self-help a source of strength to resist the political and cultural impreialism of the Europeans. Washington sought to accomodate all of these contradictory propositions.

   While intrepid research has uncovered new material that lends fresh insight, rather than illuminating Washington for compassion to his motives, the added light only casts more shadows. Utterly at variance with the Sunday-school morality he publicly professed, there was also a more feral, more power-hungry Washington, inordinately involved in politics, and particularly the poitics of patronage. Few people, even those affected, such as W.E.B DuBois and Mary White Ovington, knew the extent to which Washington refused to meet our preconceived notions of how a great leader should behave.

   Inexplicable human fraility, aside, as a guide for the black community, Washington had a concrete program of industrial education and the promotion of small business as the avenue of black advancement "up from slavery" and into the middle class. This program may have been anachronistic preparation for the age of mass production, urbanization, and corporate gigantism then coming into being; but it had considerable social realism for a black population which was, until long after Washington's death, predominantly rural and southern. It gave purpose and dignity to black working-class lives of toil and struggle, and also was well attuned to the growth and changing character of black business in Washington's day. He championed the emerging black business class as the leaders of black communities, and they in turn, through the National Negro Business League, became the backbone of Washington's following.

   Washington's followers found hope in his message that fortified them in hopeless situations. During his time, he was exalted as a type of Moses who would lead his people to the promised land as welcome participants in the mainstream of society. For many in the US and around the world, his teachings were a type of deliverance from their oppressive circumstances. Moses had quite a few faults, as all deliverers do, and one of these faults prevented him from entering the promised land of Canaan. Even with all of his great abilities to accommodate the ruling class majority, his ability to conquer overwhelming obstacles, Booker T. Washington's inability to accomodate the strategies of the NAACP, who were themselves uncompromising, weakened his effectiveness.

   After reading this remarkable text, I see Booker T. Washington as a man with great accomplishments and failings perhaps as great. Even with his shortcomings, he was exceptional as he provided his followers hope and lifted their spirit. Professor Harlan has brought to life a man of enormous complexity, who will never be completely understood or known which makes Booker T. Washington much like the people of which I claim familiarity.

   PEACE

1 comments about Khayelitsha.

1. The book was very nicely written and gave a good insight in the live of people of Kayelitsha. Also the struggle of the writer is very interesting and very well described.

5 comments about Black Cadet in a White Bastion: Charles Young at West Point.

1. There was a great deal to learn from a story that is over 100 years old. I was unfamiliar with the story of racism at the military academy and this thoroughly researched book provides a great deal of context and thought provoking observations that are useful today.
   
   The author is challenged with finding authoritative resources long after the trail has gone cold but does a great deal of first-hand reporting unearthing historic letters and photos.
   
   I understand there will be followups to this edition which should be a welcome addition to what appears to be a rather small bibliography on the subject.



2. Most biographies are about extraordinary people who accomplish extraordinary things. But the story of an ordinary person who makes the most of everything he has can be even more compelling. This is why Black Cadet in a White Bastion is well worth reading. It is a tale of accomplishment through simple perseverance, not complex genius. Brain Shellum details the slave community of Young's birth, the freeman's community of his youth, and the West Point environment where Young struggled for social and academic survival.
   
   Charles Young lived a century before there were television ads selling the Army as the place where you can "Be all you can be." He was ahead of his time, and his story is an inspiration to anyone who seeks to follow in his footsteps, to overcome the odds against them. Author Brian Shellum performs a great service by portraying Young's faults along with his strengths so that we can fully appreciate how hard he had to work to earn his stripes.



3. My book club recently read this insightful biography of Charles Young's birth through graduation from West Point with unanimous praise for Shellum's writing style and solid research. While many military bio's are dense and slow, this book reads with ease and quick pace. As two of our club members are alumni of The Academy, I was not surprised to learn from them that the descriptions of campus life and traditions were accurate and much the same for Young as those from late this century.



4. What an inspiring story! Luck, pluck and a narrow window of opportunity all lined up for Charles Young, a young African American teacher from Ohio, who knocked on West Point's doors in 1884 and found them open to him. I'm amazed that West Point enrolled Blacks in that period. But as historian and author, Brian Shellum, tells us in BLACK CADET IN A WHITE BASTION, for a short period after 1884, a few African Americans were accepted at West Point. Soon after Young graduated, the military school barred African Americans for fifty years!
   
   Shellum explains that Young struggled at West Point because of intolerance as well because of its challenging curriculum. But Young was a man who never gave up, depending on hard work, tutors, mentors, friends and family to carry him to graduation.
   
   The author outlines the challenges of writing about an individual whose color relegated him to a shadowy existence at West Point. Yet with some diligent and creative research, Shellum pieces together a biography of a hero who clearly became the Colin Powell of his time.
   
   I look forward to Shellum's next installment of Charles Young's extraordinary journey.



5. I've just finished reading this skillfully researched book about Charles Young's life. From his birth to parents with roots in Southern slavery to his graduation from West Point, it's a story that reflects a strength of character and purpose against the many odds of the time in which he lived. His struggle against the racism of the time is a story that begs to be told.

5 comments about Hapa Girl: A Memoir.

1. I have read all of Chai's books and found each one carefully crafted. Chai is articulate, and her commanding voice has an authority that sweeps the reader up and over the plains of rural Wyoming, a place of natural beauty and also a warped, ungenerous and unwelcoming social milieu which becomes Hapa Girl's crucible. Chai's rendering of a Chinese-American family's struggle to be recognized, respected and ultimately accepted is heart-rendingly believable, in many instances heartbreakingly sad, but finally redemptive. It's the sort of narrative that challenges the reader (could I manage these circumstances if I were the protagonist?) and ultimately shows us not that suffering is ennobling, but that there are survivors who have come through suffering's gauntlet and emerged with wise conviction and a formidable dignity. Five stars for this book and its talented, smart and wise author!
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   



2. Maylee's gentle mastery at weaving words, memories and strands of her family's struggles into a rich and powerful tapestry of human experience held me captivated; I read her book in one sitting.
   Don't mistake Maylee's memories as bitter - her message is clear to those who have eyes to read it and the faith to believe it, "Love Trumps Hate."



3. Reading this book, I was appalled at the portrayal of this terrible, small, South Dakota town where I, too, would have hated growing up. I feel very badly for the author's hardships she and her family endured during this time. Ironically, I did grow up in this town; moving there in 1966 at the age of 12 and eventually leaving eastern South Dakota in 1977. I am amazed at the dramatic changes that took place there in the 2 years between 1977 and 1979. This was not the town I remember in the least bit. As I read about overt violence in the high school while teachers looked away, rampant inbreeding, and widespread fear of being killed by Native Americans I can only conclude that there is a motivation behind the story that only the author can answer. Much of this makes for great fiction and hopefully, this has been therapeutic for her. I have spent the majority of my adult life in successful Engineering positions in the Silicon Valley as a result of my education at the schools in this town and colleges in the state. My two daughters are products of the California public school system so, believe me, I know about mediocrity in education. Most of the kids in this South Dakota community do not grow up on farms nor have aspirations of owning one, one day. It is quite natural for many kids in this university town to do as I did- continue education and go on to a professional career. I don't recall a lot of violence at school. My wife (also from this small town) and I could not think of any "cousin relationships" of which we were aware. Our parents would never have tolerated the disrespect and name calling described as rampant in the book. I don't feel we were the exception, either. I certainly hope the author has facts behind the story she tells of the circumstances around a young man who committed suicide; if not, shame on her. I will say that most South Dakota communities are predominately white and by and large fairly conservative. I am not necessarily surprised that it was difficult for this family to feel comfortable and "fit in". There are racists everywhere, though, and in my world experience I've never felt this community to be more so than most. Unfortunately, it sounds like there were mean spirited bullies who made life miserable for this author during adolescence. Because of the wild and reckless characterizations of certain things that I know to be untrue, the author lost most of her credibility while I read. My younger brother is 2 years older than the author. When I first heard of this book, I asked him about her. He didn't recall, went to his yearbooks, and recognized her as someone who had been a winner in the same Math contest as he during high school. Seems like an odd non-recognition for someone who was so "stared at", maligned, and the center of adversity. By the way, we did use baseball bats for baseball (not weapons that I ever recall). Much like the author describes of suburban New Jersey, there was a vacant lot behind our house where my brothers and the neighborhood kids would gather and play baseball and whiffle ball for hours on end. My apologies for a long winded review without comment regarding the quality of the writing, however, I felt compelled to raise concerns about the accuracy of the facts in what is intended to be a non-fiction book.



4. I could not put this book down... it was alive and witty and just plain filled with love of this girls family her mother played a very inportant part in this girls life , maylee since has lost her mother to breast cancer . the story was so wonderful deplicting how a family with different racial backgrounds . Maylee is outspoken and make the book come alife to me . thanks you for the wonderful story of part of my family.. always aunt susan



5. I am sure that Ms. Chai earned an A+ in creative writing class for her novel. I was in school with the author and her brother for a couple of years. In fact, I had my senior pictures taken at her mother's studio. She did a nice job and was a fun lady. I knew she was married to a Chinese man. I couldn't have cared less. It made no difference to me. I am sure that I speak for most of us in town. We had plenty going on in our own lives to get too worked up about someone elses ethnic background. There is no question that most of us were of European descent. With the Univ of SD in town, we were exposed to other cultures. It wasn't like we were the United Nations, but we were far from the 'dueling banjos' of "Deliverance." There are a few bad apples in our town-- like any town on the planet. It is certainly humbling to read of her experience in our town. The violence in the halls at school, locking all the doors to the school, attractive girls opting to get poor grades to date the cool guys, etc. Her creative juices got the best of her. Hopefully, this spiteful piece of half-truths/ fiction was therapeutic or lucrative for the author.

1 comments about Chuck Berry: The Biography.

1. chuck writes well here in this book that goes till the late 80's. he may need tow riter another that takes him further on down the road. the photos are week in the book and could have been edited a bit better but overall this is a pleasant read.

2 comments about Autobiography of W.E.B. Dubois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century.

1. I really wanted to like this book...I really did. And it's not really that bad. DuBois grants us a very revealing look at his young life, along with his education and intellectual development. His early observations and analysis of life are insightful and thought provoking. Still his writing lacks pace and fails to flow in any way other than tediously. Despite being regarded by many as one of the great men of the 20th century, his memoirs grant little to convey that greatness and leaves the reader unfulfilled at truly grasping his many accomplishments. However, DuBois' revelations regarding the N.A.A.C.P. are very interesting, and one of the better parts of the book. If you have plenty of time to spare (it's over 400 pages long) you may attain more from it than this reviewer did.



2. This book should be read by everyone who is interested in civil rights. Dubois was the pioneer of the civil rights movement and anything he had to say deserves to be read. This book is just as important as the Autobiographies of both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. After reading this book I realized what bravery was all about. Dubois didn't have the luxury of a "movement" behind him, he stood alone. He spoke his mind to whomever he felt was hindering the progress of blacks in America. Not only did he stand alone and speak his mind but he did it in a time when a black man would be lynched simply for looking at a white person the wrong way. This book is written with the same poetic style as most of his other work and continues the story of his battle against oppression where "Souls of Black Folk", and "Darkwater" leave off. You will definately benefit by taking the time to read the almost century long journey of one of the greatest thinkers and writers the world has ever seen.

2 comments about Killer Cronicas: Bilingual Memories (Writing in Latinidad).

1. Killer Crónicas asks the following questions, among others:
   
   * What is the nature of the exquisitely ambiguous pleasure we experience in passing as members of the local community?
   * What are the costs of being identified as an insider, or outsider, by members of the communities in which we travel?
   * How might the experience of being at once inside and outside be specific to pan-Latin and Jewish post-holocaust cultural identity, without regard to location?
   * How to develop a language limited enough to connote specific geopolitical contexts, yet broad enough to denote the simultaneity in memory of related circumstances separated by distance and time?
   
   Killer Crónicas draws from multiple genres, such as the literature of travel in Spanish (cartas de exploración, of discovery) and in English (here, the Anglo-American category of life-writing, which includes biography, autobiography, and letters, is helpful.) Particulary original is the sustained and studied attention to the traveler's status as a consumer. Underlying the internationalism and bilingualism of Chávez-Silverman's accomplishment is a creativity comparable to Latino performance artists such as Coco Fusco (author of English is Broken Here) Guillermo Gómez-Peña, or code-switching poets such as Tino Villanueva.
   
   I personally find Gloria Anzaldua's work almost unreadable (there's no rhyme, reason, or inventiveness) while I think that Cherrie Moraga is good for her work's characters and dynamic. In Killer Crónicas what's original is how the writer focuses attention on the relation between what we say and how we say it in one or both languages, showing how the mind moves at the moment of the "switch." This work demonstrates a mode of thought familiar to those of us who work in multiple cultural locations, reproducing the habit of thinking in multiple languages. This challenges the hegemonic attitudes about what constitutes linguistic propriety in either Spanish or English by pointing up the complexities of both languages. Also the mixture of languages legitimates a practice that is very widespread: the INVENTIVE use of multiple languages, registers. Read this very contemporary, brilliant book for the puns, for the writer's inspired, faux, alternative, and refused translations. Killer Crónicas is steeped in multiple literary traditions: Argentine, CalifAtzlan, On the Road-Trippers, but most of that incomparable Spanish-language genre that is so definitive in the New World: the Crónica. Let Susana Chavez-Silverman be your guide and you will travel far, far indeed.



2. Clever, sassy, intelligent, poetic... continual code-switching is a wonderful vehicle to convey the sensations and experiences of a multi-cultural life. Her poetry invokes the intimacy I often feel when back in a long-lost land. Her quick wit and carefully-chosen details chronical well the feelings of isolation and observer-looking-in that seem to dog me wherever I land.
   This is well worth the read.

No comments about Pierre Toussaint: A Biography.

1 comments about Stefano Della Chaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist (Black Papers, No 1).

1. An excellent piece of investigative journalism. Before al-Queda ever showed its CIA-connected face, there was a network of State-backed fascist terrorists in Europe whose shadowy goal was to spread terror and drive the people into the arms of Big Brother. This is that story.
   
   The Europe-wide network of para-fascist armies was exposed in the 90s and officially abandoned, but as we know from looking at the example of the COINTELPRO/SOG hit squads in America, the likelihood that the military-intelligence-industrial complex really ceased activity is wavering around nil.
   
   Heads up, lads.