“Around the age of 5, 6, or 7…. It comes off as a great shock to see Gary Cooper killing Indians and, although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.”
James Baldwin, Speech at Cambridge Union, Cambridge, England, 17 February 1965
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Have you seen director Raoul Peck’s documentary about James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro yet? If not, I cannot recommend this film highly enough. I have always been a film buff, so I have greatly appreciated the arrival, in the last ten or fifteen years, of a bumper crop of engaged, talented documentarians. Indeed, most evenings I watch a documentary of some sort, so I like to think I know something about the form. If “I Am Not Your Negro” doesn’t represent formal perfection, then I don’t know what does.
Also, obviously, it showcases one of the most important public intellectuals and writers of my lifetime. I’ll simply say that The Fire Next Time was one of those books that radically altered the way I perceive the world, and I am grateful to it for that.
This week’s Text is a reading on James Baldwin with a comprehension sheet to accompany it. You might also find useful (and you can get lots more of these from the generous people at Education World) this Everyday Edit on the U.S.-Africa Capital Connection.
If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
“I am an invisible man…. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man prologue (1952)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged black history, fiction/literature, united states history
Here’s a Cultural Literacy worksheet on Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man, which I regard as one of the greatest American novels of the twentieth century.
If you find typos in this document, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.
American novelist and poet. Reed’s writing reflects his belief that the black American writer should function as a kind of conjurer of what Reed calls ‘neo-hoodoo,’ an attempt to pry the distinct qualities of Afro-American culture loose from Euro-American culture. In a language composed of black dialects, standard English, and hip jargon, he writes angry satires on an American society corrupted by racism and uncontrolled technology. Among his novels are The Free-Lance Pallbearers (1967), Mumbo Jumbo (1972), Flight to Canada (1976), The Terrible Twos (1982), and Japanese by Spring (1993). His verse collections include Conjure (1972) and Secretary to the Spirits (1975). Other works include Shrovetide in Old New Orleans (1978), occasional writings; Hell Hath No Fury (1980), a play; The Terrible Threes (1990), a collection of short stories; and Airing Dirty Laundry (1993), containing memoirs.
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
[Addendum: Ishmael Reed entered my cultural cosmology when I heard the the percussionist and producer Kip Hanrahan’s projects to set Mr. Reed’s poetry to music, the first of which, Conjure (named for one of Mr. Reed’s books of verse) appeared in 1983. I continue to listen to that record regularly, now 35 years later. Two more records from Conjure have appeared, Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon (1988) and a two-disc set, Bad Mouth, released in 2006.]
Posted in English Language Arts, Essays/Readings, Quotes, Reference, Social Sciences
Tagged black history, fiction/literature, music, poetry, readings/research
“Classic ‘novel’ of Jean Toomer (1894-1967). Cane was immediately hailed as one of the foremost pieces of the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties. A collection of poems, sketches, stories, and a novella (‘Kabnis’) built around dialogue, the book was inspired by Toomer’s visit to rural Georgia to teach. There he ‘heard the folk-songs come from the lips of Negro peasants’ and ‘saw the rich dusk beauty of the poor black South.’ The title refers to one of the book’s foci, the cane fields. Cane is divided into three parts: it begins in the cane fields, moves to the harsh streets of the North, and then back to the South. The black South is seen as a link to Africa and as a sensuous, soulful place of hardship, for example dealing with such themes as miscegenation, lynching, and the efficacy of the old Negro spirituals. The second section takes place mainly in Washington, D.C., Toomer’s birthplace, where blacks are estranged from their spiritual home. Though on the surface a potpourri, Cane as whole achieves a tonal and thematic unity through its recurring images and symbols, which suggest the beauty, vitality, and pain that Toomer saw in the agrarian South, a way of life he felt was passing and for which Cane is his lament.”
Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.
[As this blog probably indicates, or more accurately belabors, I find the folklore of books and publishing endlessly fascinating. I think the choices publishers make, based as often as not on their assessment of the market for a book, says a lot–and much of it not good–about a culture and a society. One of the most famous rejections in publishing history concerns William Kennedy’s magisterial novel Ironweed, which broke down the barrier to publication of the remainder of his distinguished oeuvre. The serial rejection of Ironweed so exercised Saul Bellow that the Nobel Laureate famously said to Cork Smith, an editor at Viking, that “the author of Billy Phelan should have a manuscript kicking around looking for a publisher is disgraceful.” In the end, Bellow intervened on Kennedy’s behalf at Viking. The rest, of course, is publishing history, as The Albany Cycle as the novels that accompany Ironweed are known, joined the ranks of great American literature.]
“There is much about the novel that is very good and much that I did not like. When I throw in the balance of the book’s unrelenting lack of commerciality, I am afraid I just have to pass.”
“I like William Kennedy but not enough. He’s a very good writer, something no one needs to tell you or him, and his characters are terrific. I cannot explain turning this down.”
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities, readings/research
“…Beattie’s admirable eye for the telling detail has unfortunately developed a squint…”
Commonweal
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
“Aesopian Language Political double-talk or euphemism that has a special meaning to its advocates or initiates; a vocabulary of stock phrases, code words, and value judgments; dissembling or propagandistic jargon (from the early language of fables, in which chiefly slaves were conversant).
‘Soviet writers occasionally use Aesopian language, as writers did under the Czar, to convey hidden thoughts in disguise. Defenders of the regime, while attacking those writers for the use of Aesopian language, are now couching their attacks in Aesopian language.’ Leon Lipson, quite in Israel Shenker, Words and Their Masters.”
Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
“We are willing to return the manuscript for the same (advance) as we paid for it.”
Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.
Posted in English Language Arts, Quotes, Reference
Tagged fiction/literature, literary oddities
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