. . . by Valerie Babb
The Book of James:
The Power, Politics, and Passion of LeBron*
*Amazon Editors' Pick: Best Nonfiction
From The Book of James:
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"Growing up in neighborhoods like LeBron’s, if you’re one of the lucky ones you don’t necessarily know you are disadvantaged until you leave. Although such communities pose hard-core economic challenges and sometimes serious threats to personal safety, they also provide respite from an external white gaze. In them you are legible. In them you don’t have to explain your circumstances, because those circumstances are everyone’s. Surviving within them gives you the boldness to take received rules and rewrite them. 'If one is continually surviving the worst that life can bring, one eventually ceases to be controlled by a fear of what life can bring,' observed James Baldwin, and this was a key part of James’s confidence long before he became a star. Recalling what you’ve seen, what daily grinds you and others have survived, recalling the beauty, humor, cynicism, and grace of Blackness within these spaces, gives you the swagger you need to flout folks who will later tell you to shut up and dribble."
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A History of the African American Novel
From A History of the African American Novel:
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"It even had a degree of salacious value. Brown’s novel could easily be headlined in the following manner: 'FORMER MULATTO SLAVE WRITES FIRST BLACK NOVEL. USES DAUGHTER OF FOUNDING FATHER TO DECRY SLAVERY. OTHER RACE VOICES SURE TO FOLLOW.' Hannah Crafts’s novel would headline less neatly and sit less comfortably as the progenitor of black novels: 'WRITER OF UNKNOWN RACE (soon to be resolved in new upcoming scholarly book) WRITES NOVEL (MAYBE AUTOBIOGRAPHY?) AGAINST SLAVERY. RECALLS HAPPY MOMENTS WITH KIND MASTERS. CONDEMNS SLOTH OF OTHER SLAVES.' Clotel is a novel laden with political critique and clearly written with a public in mind. The Bondwoman’s Narrative records the ambiguities of identity formation within enslavement and is more individualistic."
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Whiteness Visible:
The Meaning of Whiteness
in American Literature and Culture
From Whiteness Visible:
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“Michel Foucault did not invent theory; Jacques Derrida did not invent theory; the barbers in my son’s barbershop did. As they fade, edge, and trim, they discourse upon histories, nations, civilizations, and all manner of human thought and invention. One 'text' they are particularly fond of deconstructing is The White Man. After one session in which they examined this construct from a psychoanalytic, a Marxist, a Hegelian, and a poststructuralist perspective, one barber concluded by saying, 'I wanna meet this white man y’all keep talkin’ ‘bout.' He of course never will, because this white man is essentially a fabrication. In hearing these barbers speak, however, the power of this fabrication materially to affect the lives of many becomes evident. Also evident are the compelling reasons why the ideology which created it must be dissected."
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Black Georgetown Remembered:
A History of Its Black Community from the Founding of "The Town of George" in 1751 to the Present Day
From Black Georgetown Remembered:
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"The history of the black Georgetown community during the 1940s and 1950s reveals the hardships of increasing displacement. New racial tensions were evident as friction occurred between renovators who were raising property values and poor blacks who could not afford minimal renovation. The passage of the Old Georgetown Act (Public Law 808) in 1950 had effectively sealed the fate of many black Georgetowners who survived the earlier in-migrations. It was a statute designed '. . . to preserve and protect the places and areas of historic interest, exterior architectural features and examples of the type of architecture used in the National Capital in the initial years.'"
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Ernest Gaines
From Ernest Gaines:
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"The larger society he depicts in his fiction is not only one in which white dominates black; it is also one in which literacy dominates orality. By focusing his fiction on the smaller community within this society, the quarters, Gaines effects a reorganization of the written-oral hierarchy and defines a possible 'black aesthetic' using the 'liars' of his community, the hoodoo of Louisiana, the history of slavery, and the quest for human dignity."
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