Review - The Bluest Eye

The Bluest Eye
by Toni Morrison
200+ pages

Description via Goodreads

You looked at them and wondered why you were so ugly; you looked closely and could not find the source. Then you realized that it came from conviction, their conviction. It was as though some mysterious all-knowing master had given each one a cloak of ugliness to wear, and they had accepted it without question (39)

I can't remember the last time I pitied a character as much as I pitied Pecola Breedlove. While she isn't the main character of this novel she is easily the most important in my opinion. Pecola Breedlove wants blue eyes, like those creepy baby dolls that everyone adores. But she will never have those eyes and she will never be adored as they are--not socially, not romantically, not even adored by her mother or father. In fact, because of her blackness, for she is definitely the wrong kind of black, she's somewhat an outcast within the black community. 

Pecola Breedlove. An interesting name. A revealing name. One quick google search*  told me the name Pecola means: (1) You sense and feel much that you do not understand, and sometimes you are alarmed at your thoughts and wonder about their origin and (2) You crave understanding and affection but your intensity of desire and your self-consciousness prevent you from finding the happiness you desire. Another search** told me it simply meant "a brazen woman". I find these two definitions somewhat contradicting...the former being more reflective of the trauma Pecola experiences in the book. The latter seems more ironic. It's as ironic as her last name, Breedlove. Pecola is not exactly the product of love and she most likely won't experience any herself. 

In fact, The Bluest Eye and the concept of beauty found within it (having blue eyes, lighter skin, non-curly hair) is only one theme that makes this book relevant. It's also about love, or the lack thereof. It's about letting someone or something have so much control over your thoughts and perception that you ultimately accept it as truth. And the truth for Pecola and many blacks in the 1940s is that they weren't lovable-- because of their skin color, they were not deserving of love. And so they did not love each other. Pecola's father hated himself (he had some daddy issues) and so he hated everyone else. He raped his daughter and then hated himself more and his daughter for what he'd done...in this way Morrison marries the concept of love and beauty. 

For some reason I was slightly shocked by the sexual content in this book at first...but then I got over it. There are a few graphic scenes, but in the grand scheme they're not inappropriate. Sex and sexuality are outwardly taboo, but it's the thread connecting everyone. Sex created those lighter-skinned and darker- skinned blacks. Sex was veiled as love. Sex numbed the pain and sometimes it fueled the pain. Morrison marries love, beauty, hate, sexuality and history. 

In the end, I didn't like this book. But not because of the writing, no, the writing is brilliant, poetic...didactic at times, but some people need things spelled out for them. On a personal note, as someone of color, I've heard these lessons on love and beauty pretty much all my life, so that's probably why it came off as preachy. But it deserves to be read. 

*The first search led me here
**The second search led me here

The Bluest Eye
Three stars

Review - Their Eyes Were Watching God

Their Eyes Were Watching God
by Zora Neale Hurston
200 pages

Description via Goodreads

Honey, de white man is de ruler of everything as fur as Ah been able tuh find out. Maybe it's some place way off in de ocean where de black man is in power, but we don't know nuthin' but what we see. So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he don't tote it. He hand it to his women folks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so far as Ah can see. Ah been prayin' fuh it tuh be different wid you. Lawd, Lawd, Lawd! (14)

This book is about the 'love life' of Janie Crawford...her three marriages and her development of self. But now that I've finished reading about this brief segment of her life, I still ask--who is Janie Crawford? The answer I'm left with is unclear. The reader never gets a sense of her intellectual or emotional capacity, only physical. She's a beautiful, light-skinned woman, with a long braid of hair which fascinates many men. But other than that I'm not sure. Her marriage and relationship with three different men says more on a societal level of analysis than personal. 

In her first marriage Janie is subservient to a husband who sees her as another beast of burden, a vessel, a workhorse. She marries for protection, not love.  In her second marriage to Joe Starks, she's subservient but instead of being an instrument, she's a trophy, an object. She marries to escape her first marriage. I have to say I hated Joe Starks. I hate his character and what he stands for. I actually wished ill upon a fictional character and thankfully the plot did not disappoint. The thing is, he's actually the best written character in the book. He is so disgusting in his thirst for envy and status among others in the black community...Her marriage to Tea cake was the most normal of all three marriages. It had the most 'love' and more egalitarian qualities. The whole, 'through sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, till death do us part, blah, blah, blah' applied to them sort of...especially when Tea cake contracts rabies. But even in this most love-filled marriage, she's still subservient, content even, and the lack of character development is disappointing. 

"Tony won't never hit her. He says beatin' women is just like steppin' on baby chickens. He claims 'taint no place on uh woman tuh hit," Joe Lindsay said with scornful disapproval, " but Ah'd kill uh baby just born dis mawnin' fuh uh thing lak dat. 'Taint nothin' but low-down spitefulness 'ginst her husband make her do it." (75)

Folkloric charm gives this book a spark of life...and interest for that matter--the 'vernacular'. It's very authentic in that respect. And the gravity in the thoughts and voices of secondary characters, those outsiders looking in--gossip, is revealing of the time. 

"You'se different from me. Ah can't stand black niggers. Ah don't blame de white folks from hatin' em cause Ah can't stand 'em mahself. 'Nother thing, Ah hates tuh see folks lak me and you mixed up wid 'em. Us oughta class off." (141)

This book makes many 'must-read' lists...but honestly, I'm having a hard time seeing why. Maybe it's because it's uncovering a truth about intra racism that I already know exists. Maybe because I personally reject the old-fashioned gender roles and power struggles between black men and black women. Maybe because I'm a northern, black woman that inevitably comes from the same southern, black heritage. I don't know. 

But I feel as though I'm missing something. Someone tell me...what am I missing? 

Their Eyes Were Watching God

Three Stars

Continuing the 'Quest' with Junot Diaz

Last year I told myself I was going to read more African-American fiction because I had knowingly avoided it for reasons mentioned here. In sum, I was annoyed that 1) Most books in the A.A. section of the bookstore looked like low-grade smut with brown people on the cover and 2) As a brown person I'm expected to read or have a connection to these books...I realize now and have realized for some time that I shouldn't generalize about things that I haven't investigated. So what did I do/try to do?--well, investigate of course. I started Quest Alpha to explore contemporary African-American fiction. 

The first book I read for Quest Alpha was Man Gone Down (click title for review). And it was amazing. I nominated it as one of the best 'Morose' reads of 2012 for it's gloomy depiction of a broken man in a broken family, trying to make the American Dream. Noting that the utter hopelessness in the stream-of-conscious narrative was raw, poetic and intellectual. I initially chose it because I thought it would address two of my favorite themes: (de)composition of the American family and failure to realize the American Dream. It did not disappoint. 

The second book I was supposed to read was Erasure by Percival Everett, but to this day I haven't been able to get my hands on a copy...so I redirected to another book--Who Fears Death (click title for review) It was like nothing I had ever read before, a weird composite of sci-fi/fantasy/dystopian with a non-eurocentric flair.

I read Who Fears Death months ago. In October I think. I haven't read anything else for the quest since then...but interestingly enough I started reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz a few days ago. And I feel I've inadvertently stumbled upon another book for the quest. However, there might be a problem...but wait, before I go into that potential problem I want to say why I think it works for the quest. There's a theme that connects Man Gone Down, Who Fears Death and The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: the struggle with identity. It is overwhelmingly present in all three books. But now the problem: Junot Diaz. No that's not right, the real problem is I don't know enough about Junot Diaz--enough about Junot Diaz's color identity. Is he one of those brown people who doesn't identify with his brownness? This of course doesn't matter in the storytelling. A good story is a good story. But I also don't want to slap a label containing any form of modifier that doesn't apply to someone, i.e African-American. There are some people who might take issue with this...not myself--but some. Diaz is Dominican point blank. I'm not certified, qualified, or justified to grade his level of blackness or African-American-ness (?) Besides I don't think Junot Diaz is one of those authors who tries to define anyone's blackness per se, he's just illustrating his reality. A reality, a genuine experience. An experience that this young woman can identify with...so anyways, I found this video of Junot Diaz speaking last December. Please watch if you have a minute or two.

So I watched the video and knew I didn't want to pull a 'passport check' AND I really like this book so I'm going to use it as reading material for Quest Alpha. But I still feel a little weird including him in the mix...I'm  going to learn all I can about Diaz...he intrigues the hell out of me.  

Review - Monster

Monster
by Walter Dean Myers
250+ pages

Description via Goodreads

The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help (1)

Monster is about the fate of a young man named Steve Harmon. There is a good chance Harmon will get 25 years to life in prison, if found guilty of felony murder. In Monster, the emotional turmoil Harmon experiences in prison and during his trial is documented into a screenplay. He does this to help him process the extreme turn his life has taken. In between scenes, Harmon has diary entries that speak more to the cruel circumstance of prison life. 

Miss O'Brien says that Petrocelli is using Bolden's testimony as part of a trail that will lead to me and James King. I think she is wrong. I think they are bringing out all of these people and letting them look terrible on the stand and sound terrible and then reminding the jury that they don't look any different from me and King (59) 

The author focuses on what it means to be guilty, or rather, what it means to not be innocent. He includes little details about Harmon's life, upbringing and neighborhood to suggest how men like Harmon are predisposed to guilt. This same guilt consumes almost every person in prison (innocent or not). Guilt manifests and infiltrates everyone. It's not a jacket you take off whenever you please; it's the pain in your gut, the bag over your head, tattooed on your forehead, multiplying in the melanin of your skin. 

I hear myself thinking like all the other prisoners here, trying to convince myself that everything will be alright, that the jury can't find me guilty because of this reason. We lie to ourselves here. Maybe we are here because we lie to ourselves (202)

At first I was unsure of how the structure of a screenplay would affect the reading experience. Would it distract me? Can I visualize these scenes correctly? Would I understand what Harmon is trying to emphasize? Yes, some phrasing is a little awkward, but the dialogue is clear. In the end I decided  what mattered more was the idea of the screenplay; the fact that the reality of Harmon's situation--the gravity of it--the bleakness of his future is so unbelievable that only a movie could capture the sensation.

Another thing I noted when reading was the overall indifference I felt to all the characters...I'm not sure if this is a good or bad thing. I didn't hate the prosecutor, I didn't empathize with Harmon, all the witness accounts and cross examinations seemed solid, the prisoner advice was casually reflective. I didn't spend any brainpower on forming my own judgement on whether Harmon was not guilty--I was just indifferent. I'm sure this due to the form of the narrative, as the reader is just there to observe. I feel weird suggesting that there's no reader engagement because I did find the novel interesting enough...

I wish Jerry were here. Not in jail, but somehow with me. What would I say to him? Think about all the tomorrows of your life. Yes, that's what I would say. Thank about all the tomorrows of your life (205) 

Monster

Three Stars

Review - A Red Death

A Red Death (Easy Rawlins #2)
Walter Mosley
250+ pages

Description via Goodreads

I didn't believe in history, really. Real was what was happening to me right then. Real was a toothache and a man you trusted who did you dirt. Real was an empty stomach or a woman saying yes, or a woman saying no. Real was what you could feel...Chaim was a good man; better than a lot of people I knew. But he was dead. He was history, as they say, and I was holding my gun in the dark, being real (286)

We meet up with Easy Rawlins five years later, sweeping the floors of some apartment complex at the corner of 91st Street and 91st Place. After some explanation, we learn that life has been a little kinder to him....but it won't last for long--it never does. Rawlins receives a letter from the IRS, detailing an ongoing investigation into his tax records. His mix up with Daphne Monet from five years ago is coming back to haunt him, in the form of jail time for tax evasion. Somehow he ends up striking a deal with an FBI agent, to spy on Chaim Wenzler, a big, bad communist working within the First African Baptist Church. If Rawlins gets the right information, then the FBI will keep the IRS off his back. If he doesn't well...he's shit out of luck. Naturally, the self-preservation instinct kicks in and Easy agrees to help the FBI.

Easy Rawlins is a great protagonist because he's layered. In A Red Death it's all about Easy's possessions; the possession of self, the struggle to keep what is his, and his desire to possess what is not his. As for the last part, I'm referring specifically to his affair with his best friend's wife, Etta Mae. The dynamic between the members of what I'm calling his inner circle, (Etta Mae and Mouse) is an interesting one...Easy respects Mouse, fears Mouse even, but that doesn't stop him from sleeping with Etta Mae. I think he's envious of Mouse, even though he knows Mouse is a bad man. He never says this straight out, but the feeling is inherent in his willingness to help Mouse make things right with his family--the family Easy wishes he had.

I took special note of Easy's admiration of Jackson and his business of trading valuable information. Jackson is not only book-smart, he has a hand in the rumor mill, and provides thoughtful commentary on the reality of Easy's current political environment.

'One day they gonna th'ow that list out, man. They gonna need some movie star or some new bomb an' they gonna th'ow that list away. Mosta these guys gonna have work again,' he said then he winked at me. 'But you still gonna be a black niggah, Easy. An' niggah ain't got no union he could count on, an' niggah ain't got no politician gonna work fo' him. All he got is a do'step t'shit in and a black hand t'wipe his black ass.' (258) 

The idea that Easy had to spy on a communist was interesting. Easy has no animosity at all towards the communist, Chaim Wenzler, but he has to deceive him to keep his possessions. In this case, I don't think of communism as a redefined "enemy", it's simply another added element of danger, another risk for a man trying to do good for himself in a bad world.  

A Red Death

Four Stars

Review - Devil in a Blue Dress

Devil in a Blue Dress (Easy Rawlins #1)

by Walter Mosley

200+ pages

Description via Goodreads

A man like Dewitt Albright didn't die, couldn't die. It frightened me even to think of a world that could kill a man like that; what could a world like that do to me? (210)

Let's get right into it. Easy Rawlins is unemployed, but still has bills to pay. He runs into a man who will pay him to find information on the whereabouts of a woman named Daphne Monet. Easy accepts this  assignment but quickly discovers that he could be in over his head.

Mosley uses Rawlins in a very Ellisonian (Ellison-esque?) way to confront issues of poverty and race relations in this hard-boiled crime story. I really like the tour of the L.A underworld led by Easy to find Daphne. Whether it be a hole-in-the-wall bar, secret jazz club, local barbershop, sketchy apartment complexes, or around-the-way brothel, Easy uses his social connections to extract the information he needs. I also really appreciate the reflections on race relations throughout the book because they add another layer to Easy's persona. At the same time, it's not just blackness or whiteness, right and wrong. There's the universal idea that regardless of background; money, fear and power can turn anyone. 

There were a few elements I could of done without, such as, 'the voice'. 'The voice' is the conscience that likes to pop up during high stress situations, and lead Easy to victory. I thought it was kind of cheesy...And surprisingly, I was really challenged by Easy's Houston/LA twang, which was odd because I'm no stranger to Southern speak. Coretta and Daphne bothered me too. I think many readers, particularly female readers like myself, will find their motivations and decisions to be insanely annoying. I didn't have a problem with them seducing Easy, no, that was to be expected, but it's unfortunate that they were simply objects of possession. Easily used and discarded. I mean, after Coretta hooks up with Easy, she's murdered and that's it. I don't know, just seemed like a very masculine-fantasy, way to go about things...I'm also wondering if that's just characteristic of this type of fiction.

"You see, Easy," he cut me off, "Daphne has a predilection for the company of Negroes. She likes jazz and pigs' feet and dark meat, if you know what I mean.'' (26)

Out of all the characters (and there are many), I hold a special dislike for Daphne--not Albright, not Mouse, not Frankie Green--Daphne Monet. I hate that she was placed on a pedestal, though I understand why. The most obvious reason being her connection to a potentially large sum of money, and later on to the crimes that will follow. The less appealing reason is she's a woman in demand, but at times unavailable and seemingly unattainable. However, that doesn't deter Easy one bit. He bends over backwards for this mysterious, white woman and puts himself in danger to help her, to be with her, to be her lover. But Daphne has her own secrets... 

"She wanna be white. All them years people be tellin' her how she light-skinned and beautiful but all the time she knows that she can't have what white people have. So she pretend and then she lose it all. She can love a white man but all he can love is the white girl he think she is."

 

What's that got to do with me?"

 

"That's just like you, Easy. you learn stuff and you be thinkin' like white men be thinkin'. You be thinkin' that what's right fo' them is right fo' you. She look like she white and you think like you white. But brother you don't know that you both poor niggers. And a nigger ain't never gonna be happy 'less he accept what he is. (209)

When Easy finds out the truth about Daphne he's devastated. He actually compares it to an earthquake, and almost refuses to see her for what she is. A woman he lusted for, who caused him to search down in his soul, someone he could have died for had deceived him, and on top of that, she was one of his own. This made me feel some kind of way...I love that Mosley was able to convince me to dislike a character so much.

In the end, I found myself less concerned with who killed who and why, and more concerned with who is who and why. The characters and setting are way more intriguing. To me it's an origin story, Easy Rawlins' transition from black war veteran and day laborer to private investigator, in 1940s, Los Angeles. I can't wait to read more Easy Rawlins mysteries. 

Devil in a Blue Dress

Four stars.

Review - Man Gone Down

Man Gone Down
Author: Michael Thomas
Pages: 400+

Description via Goodreads

This is a story about a broken man's desperate attempt to piece together his part of the puzzle, that is the American Dream. Unemployed and virtually homeless, the readers will follow his last four days in the city, as he tries to find a place to live for his family, and come up with tuition for his children's education. The pressure to provide these things is overwhelming, and the nameless narrator must succeed, or risk losing his wife and their three young children. In the concrete jungle of New York City, he has two options: fight or flight. 

It's a strange thing to go through life as a social experiment.

Ruminations on his current situation combined with flashbacks onto the past reveal how this man became broken, and arguably how this man was doomed to be broken from the start. He views himself as a social experiment, and it's clear he feels that race is a defining variable. For many who don't usually read things that offer racial discourse, his infusion of the race issue might be slightly off-putting. In this book, blackness and whiteness matter; it matters when he tries to find an apartment, when he plays golf, in his relationships, when he gets coffee. It matters. 

I found the first-person rambling/stream-of-consciousness to be poetic, raw, intellectual and true. Sometimes I felt bad for him. Sometimes I could relate. And other times I was frustrated with him. I mean, you wonder how someone so talented and with the opportunities he's had, can become so broken. Every once in awhile, he'd become too hermetic--I couldn't get into his head. For example, it was endearing to hear him talk about his kids, but sad to hear him talk about leaving them forever...You want to root for him, but there's a hopelessness. 

I did raise an eyebrow at a few things...like why couldn't his wife work too? and why couldn't his children go to public school until they were more financially stable to send them to private school? I couldn't help but think he was trying to maintain some remnant of the wasp lifestyle for his wife. When you're broke spiritually and financially, maintaining an image is usually pretty low on the priority list. And yet I know this was intentional--another challenge of marrying a blue-blood. I also thought it was interesting that he kept mentioning his Irish and Native American heritage because it didn't really help him out. It didn't make him any less black...maybe it made him more acceptable to his wife and their white friends...I don't know, it was just odd. I guess it was another struggle with identity. 

Here are a few quotes (of many) that I liked:

It's a bad idea to put on music while trying to make a plan. It may be that I need to stop listening altogether. Dylan makes me feel alienated and old; hip-hop. militant. Otis Redding is too gritty and makes me think about dying young. Robert Johnson makes me feel like catching the next thing smoking and Satan. Marley makes me feel like Jesus. (26) 

I know that drunks, madman, and corpses make for lousy dinner guests. But I also believe that there's a them and they believe that they are good, and I know that if I had what they have--privilege, money, and numbers--I'd tear this fucking place down. (124) 

There's a limited amount of space for people, any people anywhere. And on the inside of any powerful institution, especially for people of color, that space gets smaller and stranger. Most white folks believe the reason you've come in is to uplift your people. But you can't bring your people inside, except compressed into a familiar story that's already been sanctioned. And you wouldn't be there in the first place unless you were a recognizable type: the noble savage, Uncle Tom, the Afro-Centric, the Oreo, the fool. (147) 

Thomas' antihero acknowledges the subtleties of the race question in everyday life. It's a very powerful and engaging narration. If you don't like to discuss race (for whatever reason) I don't think you'll be able to appreciate this book. But I'm really glad I read this one.

Man Gone Down

Four stars.

Starting Points: The Quest to Explore Contemporary African-American Fiction

I thought about my post on African-American literature/fiction over the entire weekend. I mostly contemplated the type of books I would end up reading...I'm not opposed to novels exploring sexuality, but I really don't want to read a whole bunch of smut. I also thought about re-reading books or reading more works by familiar or traditional authors associated with the genre. But I don't want to do that, so I won't. I want to read contemporary, as in no earlier than...what is it now? 2012? Wow.  Let's say no earlier than the year 2000. And so I thought I'd start with these two books:

 

Why am I starting with this book?

Easy. It was named in the article I discussed last week --Does African-American Literature Exist?-- and it seems like it will address two of my favorite themes: (de)composition of the American family and failure to realize the American Dream...I don't know why I like to read these things, but I do. 

And why this book?

Honestly, I'm a little hesitant about this one because it's supposed to be satirical. It's not that I don't 'get' satire because I do...I just think satire is very hard to execute successfully. Anyways, it seems like Everett uses satire to address some of my grievances with 'African-American' fiction of today. I also like the word 'erasure' and what it could mean in the context of this book. Cultural erasure? Intellectual erasure? Erasure of identity?  

 

 

 

 

 

What is this 'African-American' Literature you speak of?

What are black people writing about today? Can someone please shed some light on African-American literature? When I go into a bookstore about 95 percent of the books in the 'African-American' fiction section look something like this:

             or this...                      

Are we to assume that black people can only write smut? No—that can’t be right. These politically correct labels have many people confused. African-American literature is about black people, for black people and by black people, right? No, not quite. When I read and re-read Ellison's Invisible Man (amazing by the way), his message about invisibility can’t only appeal to people with brown skin. Or can it? I've read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (also amazing)...but does this even count? It's about a black woman's contribution to science and the present-day struggle of her family, but it's written by a white woman (Rebecca Skloot).

I’m vexed. What is African-American literature? Or more relevant to me, what is the state of African-American fiction? I think about foundational authors; Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, James Weldon Johnson, Ralph Ellison, Maya Angelou (to name a few) What did their writing mean in the past? What does it mean now and for the future?

I think that in the past—that is to say, before our ‘post-racial’ society—their stories told of a consciousness forgotten, a subconscious element of an era defined by racial separation and degradation. They were the voices of history (little ‘h’) that History could not suppress. I came across this article by English professor Kenneth Warren, which does a lot better job of explaining the historical aspect than I can.

Does African-American Literature exist?

Here’s what I took from the article:

• AA lit. has come to an end which is not something to regret or lament.
• AA lit. is of a historical period, the Jim Crow era, a Jim Crow phenomenom.
• No one can write AA literature just as no one can write Elizabethan literature.
• The society that gave rise to AA lit is not one that we have or want now.

Definitions of AA lit (according to others):

• Black authors that reworked rhetorical practices, myths, folklore and tradition from the African continent.
• A prolonged argument with slavery.
• Refutation against the charges of black inferiority.
• An instrument that served to fight against Jim Crow.

*Writing was a function of changing the world, explicit propaganda, the primary subject matter was the welfare of the race*

 

I starred the last talking point because it best sums up my thoughts on what African-American literature was in the past…I don’t know that the same can or should be applied to African-American literature of today or of the future. If you read the comments at the bottom, I think you’ll find there isn’t 100 percent agreement on the question or answer. One person left a link to another website: The African-American Book Club

 

Do you see what I see? I see a paused video clip with the image of a man’s bare chest plastered with female hands with really long fake nails. Is this the future? Now, in all fairness, I haven’t had a chance to check out the entire website (which claims to be the #1 site for African-American Literature) The image really turned me off to exploring the website any further…I’ve digressed a little. Let’s bring it back.

 

So does African-American literature exist? I really want it to. I know there has to be some contemporary authors out there, who can write some creative, engaging and thought-provoking stuff.

 

I look at my TBR list for the reading challenges and only have three books written by black authors (Yesterday Will Make You Cry - Chester Himes, Devil In A Blue Dress – Walter Mosley, and The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man – James Weldon Johnson). Fortunately, the article by Kenneth Warren gave me a starting point—Man Gone Down by Michael Thomas—and I’m determined. I’m on a quest to find these gems, to find an answer.

 

p.s-- I only posted images of Zane books because her shit is everywhere, not because I have anything against her.

 

Review - The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Author: James Weldon Johnson 

Pages: 200+
 

Description: 

The unnamed narrator, the offspring of a black mother and a white father, tells of his coming-of-age at the beginning of the 20th century. Light-skinned enough to pass for white but emotionally tied to his mother's heritage, he ends up a failure in his own eyes after he chooses to follow the easier path after witnessing a white mob set fire to a black man.

My thoughts:
 

This is a great book. I highlighted many passages and I really enjoyed reading it. It's a fictional autobiography where the protagonist observes and relates his experience as a bi-racial individual from youth to adulthood. The following lines are imprinted in my head throughout the entire reading:

I feel that I am led by the same impulse which forces the un-found-out criminal to take somebody into his confidence, although he knows that the act is likely, even almost certain, to lead to his undoing. I think I find a sort of savage and diabolical desire to gather up all the little tragedies of my life, and turn them into a practical joke on society[Loc. 17-21]

Is the book a tragedy? --somewhat. Is it satire? --negative. In my view, the narrator has conducted a social experiment on the question of race, where he is both the scientist and the specimen. The social experiment of "passing", shifting one's racial identity for acceptance in society is very complex and detailed by the narrator to be a morally controversial one. In the novel, the narrator traverses the East Coast from North to South, leaves for Europe and then returns to the United States to traverse the coast once again from North to South, only to return to New York.  As he travels he develops his own theories and philosophies, and categorizes all classes and castes of both white and black people. These theories and categorizations form a discourse on race in American society at the turn of the 20th century after the era of reconstruction and during the Harlem Renaissance.

As we already know, the discourse on the question of race in America is complex. The narrative does not ignore the fact that Black culture has been disenfranchised and made one-dimensional and the narrator's existence dispels the stereotype of what Black culture is supposed to be. His education, talent as a musician and capacity to speak several languages refutes the argument that Black people will never be equal to White people, intellectually. It suggests the opposite; Black people have made leaps and bounds of progress and they are a civilized people... I have to acknowledge that the narrator had a very fortunate upbringing. Even after the death of his mother, he seemed to possess a great amount of luck with work and the acquaintances he made. His sophistication and skill as a musician helped him no doubt, but his fair complexion had a great influence as well. Had he been a darker mulatto...well, he couldn't have passed.

When the narrator is on a train to the South, he overhears a heated debate between a Texan farmer and a  professor from Ohio. The professor implies that not a single original or fundamental intellectual achievement that has raised man in the scale of civilization, can be credited to the Anglo-Saxon; the only contribution being what they have done in steam and electricity and making war more deadly. Interesting. Regardless of whose ideology dominates the race question, I think the following quote says a lot about the attitudes on all sides.

I once heard a colored man sum it up in these words: 'It's no disgrace to be black , but its often very inconvenient.[Loc. 1372-73]

In the end, no matter how great of Black man the narrator was, life as white man would be easier. Watching a Black man get burned alive by a mob of angry white people made that choice all the more clear...I wonder if I would have done the same?...I don't know.

All the while I understood that it was not discouragement or fear or search for a larger field of action and opportunity that was driving me our of the Negro race. I knew that it was shame, unbearable shame. Shame at being identified with a people that could with impunity be treated worse than animals. [Loc 1695-97]

I was relieved to know that he felt some guilt and shame after he made the decision to live as a white man, but I still can't say that he was 100 percent wrong to do it. 

 

The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
 

Four stars