Greetings from Amazon.com Delivers Black Studies
This month, we look at Frederick Douglass's clandestine love life, rediscover a Harlem Renaissance satire, dig into the latest from Eric Jerome Dickey, and consider the role religion has played in American racial politics. "Love Across Color Lines" by Maria Diedrich http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0809016133/entertainmentsit Mulatto ex-slave Frederick Douglass and half-Jewish, German-bred journalist Ottilie Assing were unlikely candidates for romance when they met in New York in 1856. But what began as an interview for a biography on the famed African American abolitionist turned into a torrid, extramarital love affair that lasted 28 years. In "Love Across Color Lines," Maria Diedrich explores the labyrinthine sexual, social, and racial conventions of 19th-century American society with which these two intelligent people had to contend. Through Douglass and Assing's letters, Diedrich reconstructs the triumph and tragedy of their union. "Douglass was enchanted with his German companion, but he never again forgot that any liaison with a white woman could prove fatal to his political mission," she writes. "Assing," meanwhile, "respected the burden he had taken upon himself. She defied conventional notions of morality and became both intellectually and physically intimate with this extraordinary man, certain that he would marry her." When Douglass's wife died, however, he eventually married another (younger, white) woman--and Assing committed suicide. In addition to uncovering a vital aspect of Douglass's personal life largely overlooked by previous biographers, Diedrich's informative work looks at Assing's remarkable sacrifice, powered by a love that propelled her into America's bewildering racial wilderness. "Black No More" by George S. Schuyler http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/037575380X/entertainmentsit This satirical Harlem Renaissance-era novel by black conservative intellectual George S. Schuyler (1895-1977), who wrote for the Pittsburgh Courier and contributed to the NAACP's influential Crisis magazine, is a hilariously insightful treatise on the absurdities of racial identity. Dr. Junius Crookman, a Harlem-based African American physician, mysteriously returns from Germany with a formula that can transform black people into whites. "It looked," Schuyler deadpans, "as though science was to succeed where the Civil War failed." One of the first to enlist Dr. Crookman's services is an insurance salesman named Max Disher, who as the white Matthew Fisher is now free to pursue the white women who once rejected him and otherwise bask in Euro-American social privilege (including a top position in a hate group called the Knights of Nordica). Schuyler unveils the futility of this electrochemical form of "passing" through the emptiness the Disher/Fisher character encounters in the white cultural world, which doesn't measure up to the Harlem nightlife--revealing the poison behind the notion of wanting to be something you're not. "Cheaters" by Eric Jerome Dickey http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525943862/entertainmentsit After a brief detour to New York City for "Milk in My Coffee," Eric Jerome Dickey returns to Southern California for his fourth multitrack African American love story. The main story is a "he said, she said" affair between Stephan Mitchell, a well-to-do young software designer who's determined not to let any one woman get in the way of his good time, and Chante Marie Ellis, who's decided to start turning the tables on men who try to play her for a fool. From now on, she declares, "A dog gets what a dog gets ... dogged." As always, Dickey shows that he's on top of the current scene, peppering his characters' lives with the latest in black fashion and culture (if you ever find yourself driving in the Los Angeles area, you'll know exactly what your radio presets should be). Although the ending might be a little too neatly wrapped up, you'll never know before you get there whether the next chapter's going to contain romance, comedy, heartache--or maybe a little of each. Dickey's at the top of his form in "Cheaters," establishing yet another credential for his status as a master of the contemporary urban romance. Have you read Dickey's "Milk in My Coffee" yet? When it first came out in 1998, Amazon.com noted that "Dickey gets far beyond the stereotypes" of interracial romance, "infusing all his characters with complex emotional lives." http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451194063/entertainmentsit "Race, Religion and the Continuing American Dilemma" by C. Eric Lincoln http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0809016230/entertainmentsit Noted Duke religion professor C. Eric Lincoln, author of "The Black Muslims in America," examines the contradictions between the American religious ideals of love and brotherhood and the betrayal of those ideals by the white citizens who preached them the most, as well as the practical applications of those beliefs by the black church. "In the larger sense," he writes, "this is a book about America, a self-perceived 'nation under God...' In a more intimate sense, it is a perplexing American phenomenon: the strange rapprochement between church and society, which continues to embarrass the faith, vitiate the society, and saddle both with a burdensome dilemma that seems to persist despite the fervor of our religion." Picking up where Gunner Myrdal's classic "An American Dilemma" left off, Lincoln describes the liberation theology of African American Christianity-- from the motherland to the Americas--and the history of its adherents' struggle for social democracy and justice (as well as noting the help offered by equally progressive white congregations). He painfully recounts the late 20th-century assaults on black churches and the problem of police brutality, which he names "the Fuhrmanization of justice" after bigoted LAPD detective (and O.J. Simpson trial celebrity) Mark Fuhrman. Drawing from biblical heroes, Lincoln ultimately prophesizes that "racial reconciliation will require the sacrificial spirit of Abraham, the tenacity of Moses, the Wisdom of Solomon, and the unshakable faith that being American is worth what it takes to save America from itself." "Trouble in Mind" by Leon F. Litwack http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0375702636/entertainmentsit The name of the era, "Jim Crow," was somehow derived from an old minstrel song, but there was nothing frivolous about the laws and traditions used to keep blacks from participating in society in the post-Reconstruction South. Leon Litwack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning authority on African American history, has written a searing account of the age of Jim Crow in "Trouble in Mind." The book is arranged in thematic chapters that show how blacks were restricted at every turn. Blacks were kept in perpetual debt, denied proper schooling, and were subjected to daily assaults on their dignity. Most disturbing was the institution of lynchings; Litwack documents how they were carefully planned in advance and attracted large crowds who viewed them as cathartic entertainment. "Trouble in Mind" is a laudable book about a long, sad chapter in American history. ****** You'll find more great books, articles, excerpts, and interviews in Amazon.com's Nonfiction section at Nonfiction
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