One significant omission in my knowledge of American history that I realized upon reading this collection of essays is the state of race relations from Reconstruction through to the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s. I will put that omission up to the focus of US high school history on wars and any of my own teacher's focus on their youth and young adulthood in the 60s and 70s---and, frankly, my own acceptance of this gap.
Baldwin groups his 10 essays into three parts. The first deals with literature, movies and black America's place within each. Included in this section is an excellent assessment of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Baldwin notes that it is a protest novel and, as such, cannot be considered in a any way to be a well written work of fiction.
The second group are about Baldwin's experiences (and those of his family) as a black man (Negro, in his time period) in America. One story he tells in this section is about his brother's experience campaigning for the progressive party in the South. His family is from Harlem and the reason his brother went with the campaign in the first place was to sing, but he was more-or-less forced to campaign. This episode highlighted what Baldwin described as a complete lack of interested from any black American in the politics of the time, since promises made to them were never kept and they knew they never would be.
Also in this second group is an excellent essay about his father's death. In particular, a scene that sticks with me is Baldwin being led up to see his father's body in the casket by a well-meaning church member. He had little desire to see the body in the first place and no desire to do so with a non-family member. This essay also described some riots in Harlem that occurred the day after his father's death. It is funny, as I think to myself now, of course there were riots and other demonstrations of poor race relations, otherwise the movement of the 60s would never have happened. I, though, never even thought enough about it to wonder about the origins.
The final group, and the group I liked the best as a whole, were about Baldwin's stay in Europe. Much of it---and particularly his description of his stay in a French prison---reminded me of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. I particularly liked the descriptions of the difference of being black in the US vs. in Europe. The baggage is different between being a colonial citizen and the descendant of a slave. Also, the idea of not being able to trace one's ancestry back beyond a bill of sale is one of the more thought provoking ideas about what it means to be black in America that I've heard (today, of course, with DNA they are able to find out what part of Africa the ancestors of modern American blacks came from---but that means little when you can't follow the direct family tree back there).
I enjoyed Baldwin's writing and will look for some of his other works. His prose is strong, clear, engaging and intelligent.
8/10
Amanda understates the power of these essays. To give you a taste, here's the first paragraph of the title piece:
ReplyDelete"On the twenty-ninth of July, in 1943, my father died. On the same day, a few hours later, his last child was born. Over a month before this, while all our energies were concentrated in waiting for these events, there had been, in Detroit, one of the bloodiest race riots of the century. A few hours after my father's funeral, while he lay in state in the undertaker's chapel, a race riot broke out in Harlem. On the morning of the third of August, we drove my father to the graveyard through a wilderness of smashed plate glass."
In one of his essays, Baldwin says something to the effect that he felt his survival depended on his writing, and reading these essays, you can feel it.
Dave is right.
ReplyDeleteI was very much caught up in the historical aspects of these essays and forgot reinforce that the prose is excellent.