New Books in African American Studies show

New Books in African American Studies

Summary: Discussions with Scholars of African Americans about their New Books

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  • Artist: New Books Network
  • Copyright: Copyright © New Books Network 2011

Podcasts:

 Nikky Finney, “Head Off & Split: Poems” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:04:48

UPDATE: Nikky Finney’s Head Off & Split has been named a finalist for a National Book Award. Congratulations, Nikky, from the folks at New Books in African American Studies and the New Books Network!) Poet Nikky Finney’s new book Head Off & Split (TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2011) has made an immediate splash, receiving well-deserved critical acclaim from the literary world and wide attention from the reading public. Although her book has only been out a few months, it has already been widely reviewed, with Finney featured on the cover of the prestigious literary journal Poets & Writers. Finney is among the who’s who of writers, a poet about whom Nikki Giovanni says, “We all, especially now, need.” And yet Finney is unpretentious, caring, and inspirational. All this is illustrated in her interview for New Books in African American Studies, where she discusses the autobiographical impulse behind the book’s title, pays homage to black womanhood, worries about black boys, and she speaks on her love of love, of life, of words, of laughter. Finney is deep. And while that description might seem trite, think metaphorically, think still waters. There is much to mine in both Head off  &  Split and in this interview. Finney has a generous spirit, giving much of herself to the world. But don’t be fooled. She doesn’t give all away. She reserves a little for herself, hones her spirit, cultivates it, as any good writer would. Then she lays some aesthetics on it, on what she has kept for herself, and blesses us, the world, when we’re ready. That’s what she has done in her latest volume. Enjoy it.

 Harvey Young, “Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:58:15

With the election of Barack Obama, the first U.S. president of African descent, many people believed that America had ushered in an era of post-racial harmony. Harvey Young is not one of them. When it comes to the racial experience of black people, particularly, though not exclusively, of black men, Young takes James Baldwin’s sage advice: “Take no one’s word for anything, including mine—but trust your experience.” I interviewed Young about his new book Embodying Black Experience: Stillness, Critical Memory, and the Black Body (University of Michigan Press, 2010). In it, Harvey examines five “spectacular events,” including an opening autobiographical one, that persuasively reveal his argument “that embodied experiences develop, in part, from racial (mis)recognition and spotlight how an idea of the black body materially affects actual bodies” (11). In other words, Young points out how despite the multifarious identities that constitute what we know as the “African American” identity (i.e., it ain’t monolithic), all black bodies in America are subject to “compulsory visibility” (12). This hyper and unavoidable visibility didn’t begin yesterday. It is historical and is recorded in what Harvey calls the “repository of experience” (23), as revealed in a range of artifacts that he examines. These include such things as daguerreotypes of black captives to theatrical productions such as Susan Lori Parks play “Venus” (based on the “Hottentot Venus”). What I learned from Harvey’s book is that being recognized as black is certainly not always negative. But when it is, and it is often enough, it’s very painful. And I would say, as I said to Harvey, that he has written one of the best books on contemporary identity politics in this still “retrograde racial” America. His book seeks to diminish the causes of that pain. Listen in. Read the book. And let me know your opinion.

 Kwasi Konadu, “The Akan Diaspora in the Americas” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:00:32

How can those in African, Africana, and African American Studies strengthen their disciplinary ties? What do these connections have to do with Kwasi Konadu’s recent study The Akan Diaspora in the Americas (Oxford 2010)? How can the scholarship produced in African, Africana, and African American Studies serve the interests of people of African descent across the globe? Indeed, how can the history of the Akan people help us to better understand slavery and the history of the Americas? What does it mean for a scholar who is the descendant of Ghanaians, born in Jamaica and reared in America to make his life work about African history? And how does that scholar feel about his personal role in the legacy of the Diaspora, about a being a Black father in the U.S.? Kwasi Konadu speaks about all of this and more in his New Books in African American Studies interview. Konadu’s intellectual commitment to uncovering and explaining the Akan people, their language, culture, and performative practices is inspiring. In fact, he seeks to encourage his colleagues in Africana Studies–broadly construed to include African American and African studies–“to get the story straight,” that is, to cultivate a rich appreciation for the narrative histories of the peoples of the African Diasporas (plural) and to explore what those narrative histories mean for our teaching and even our lives. I am persuaded by Konadu and personally plan to take up his call in my own teaching and research. I ask myself, “How could I not after talking to him, especially since he gives suggestions that are easy to implement?” I bet that after listening to him that you too will become a believer. Enjoy the interview, and let us know what you think!

 Alan Nadel, “August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:50:45

Many scholars consider August Wilson to be the premier American playwright of the 20th Century. Alan Nadel is surely one of their number. In the early 1990s, he focused our attention on Wilson’s plays in the outstanding collection of essays May All Your Fences Have Gates: Essays on the Drama of August Wilson (University of Iowa Press, 1993). Since the publication of that work, Wilson completed his magnum opus–a ten-play cycle–shortly before his death in 2005. So now Nadel has followed up his first essay collection on Wilson with a second: August Wilson: Completing the Twentieth-Century Cycle (University of Iowa Press, 2010). This volume, as Nadel asserts, is for the trained cultural critic and everyday reader. My opinion is that the volume, like the first one, is centrally important to literary critics, performance scholars, and your average serious theatre goer, as well as to anyone interested in 20th-Century American culture. Listen to the interview, read the book, and share your thoughts.

 Chad Williams, “Torchbearers of Democracy: African-American Soldiers in the World War I Era” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:47:03

[Crossposted from New Books in Military History] One of the great “grey” areas of World War I historiography concerns the African-American experience. Even as the war was ending, white historians, participants, and politicians strove to limit the record of the African-American soldiers’ participation, while also casting the standard narrative of the war as a white American crusade against German militarism. The rich experience of the African-American community–from the quest for legitimacy and equality by educated black social and political leaders, to the Great Migration of thousands of families out of the Deep South in search of wartime work and opportunity; from the battles waged by black soldiers against both Germans and Jim Crow abroad and at home, to the violent white backlash against entire black communities–has far too long been hidden away from public view. While there have been some efforts since the war ended to restore this history to its rightful place, until recently too many of these accounts have focused on specific units, individuals, or events, often by well-meaning amateurs, driven by their own zeal to correct injustices and set the record straight as any desire to assist in crafting a solid historical narrative. Chad Williams’ new book Torchbearers of Democracy: African-American Soldiers in the World War I Era (UNC Press, 2010) is part of the effort by a new generation of scholars to recount the history of the African-American wartime experience. Grounded in extensive archival research, Williams offers a painstakingly constructed narrative, balanced with insightful analyses on how World War I and the immediate post-war period, for all of their disappointments and challenges, should be considered as the founding point of the modern Civil Rights movement. An assistant professor at Hamilton College, Chad Williams has received the 2011 Society of Military History Distinguished Book Award for Torchbearers of Democracy.  

 Jonathan Metzl, “The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:44:06

[Crossposted from New Books in Sociology] Schizophrenia is a real, frightening, debilitating disease. But what are we to make of the fact that several studies show that African Americans are two to three times more likely than white Americans to be diagnosed with this malady, and that black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean are six to nine times more likely to be judged schizophrenic than other residents of the United States.  Is there a racist–or, at the very least, racialized–element in diagnoses of schizophrenia? According to psychiatrist and cultural critic Jonathan Metzl, the answer is “yes.” In The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia became a Black Disease (Beacon Press, 2010), Metzl argues that psychiatrists at the height of the Civil Rights movement used the example of supposedly ‘volatile,’ ‘belligerent’ and ‘unstable’ African American men to define schizophrenia. Drawing on a variety of sources—patient records, psychiatric studies, racialized drug advertisements, and metaphors for schizophrenia—Metzl shows how schizophrenia and blackness evolved in ways that directly reflected the white status quo’s anxiety and uneasiness with growing racial tensions and upheaval.  Schizophrenia, Metzl explains, went from being a mostly white, middle-class mental illness in the 1950s to one identified with blackness, madness, and civil strife in the decades that followed.

 Nell Irvin Painter, “The History of White People” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:04:19

[Crossposted from New Books in History] We in the West tend to classify people by the color of their skin, or what we casually call “race.” But, as Nell Irvin Painter shows in her fascinating new book The History of White People (Norton, 2010), it wasn’t always so. The Greeks didn’t do it, at least very seriously. The Romans didn’t do it, at least very often. And the folks of the Middle Ages didn’t do it, at least with much gusto. In fact, the people who invented the modern concept of “race” and the classification of people by skin color were Europeans and Americans of the Enlightenment and Romantic Era. Why then and there? As Painter points out, a number of historical trends coincided to produced “racial science” and its child “whiteness” in Europe and North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These trends included: the “discovery” of New Worlds (and the people in them) in the Americas, Asia, and Africa; the evolution of the African slave trade and with it the historically novel identification of “negroes” with slavery; the birth of proto-anthoropology and with its ancillary sciences (e.g., “craniometry”); nationalism, and desire of nationalists (especially Germans) to discover the intrinsic “greatness” of particular nations (notably theirs); the massive influx of “undesirable” Irish and Eastern Europeans into the United States; and the “progressive” idea that human populations could be bred for “superior traits,” that is, eugenics. All these things forced European and American elites to think hard about what kind of people they were. The conclusion they reached was that they were (variously) “Anglo Saxons,” “Nordics,” “Aryans” and eventually just “Whites.” That they believed themselves to be superior to all other “races” should not surprise us (humans being naturally prideful). But the muddle-headed quality of their thought on matters racial should raise some eyebrows, for these people were not dumb. They were, however, afraid, and fear often drives even well-intentioned, intelligent people to say foolish things. This they certainly did. Alas, some people still do. They should read Nell Painter’s fine book.

 Charles Lane, “The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:07:10

[Crossposted from New Books in History] Why did Reconstruction fail? Why didn’t the post-war Federal government protect the civil rights of the newly freed slaves? And why did it take Washington almost a century to intercede on the behalf of beleaguered, oppressed African Americans in the South? In a terrific new book, Charles Lane explains why. The Day Freedom Died. The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction (Henry Holt, 2008) tells the tale of a little-known though remarkably important incident: the murder of close to 100 freedmen by a posse of White supremacists in Louisiana in 1873. Charles does an excellent job of narrating this heart-wrenching and disturbing event. The book would be worth reading for that story alone. But he really comes into his own in describing the legal aftermath of the slaughter. With all the skill of a seasoned reporter–which he is–Charles chronicles the passage of the Colfax case from the courts of New Orleans to the U.S. Supreme Court. The result was a landmark decision–United States v. Cruikshank–that effectively placed the civil rights of Southern African Americans in the hands of Southern Whites for almost a century, with predictable results. A must-read for anyone interested in Reconstruction, constitutional law, and the sad history of race-relations in the United States. Please become a fan of “New Books in African American Studies” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 Matt Wasniewski, “Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007″ | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:57:16

See at Amazon.com [Crossposted from New Books in History] In just a few days, the United States will inaugurate its first black president, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois.  And though it’s a momentous day for the cause of equality, Mr. Obama is hardly the first African American to come to DC to serve the people of the United States. His way was paved by well over one hundred black legislators who served over the past 140 years in the House and Senate. Happily, you can read all about them in wonderful Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 (U.S. House of Representatives, Office of the Clerk, Office of History and Preservation, 2008). This is book has three cardinal virtues. First, it’s timely, as we’ve said. The editors and authors deserve praise for seeing it into print at exactly the right moment. Second, it’s well researched and written. The entries–one for each black legislator–are at once informative, rich in detail, and full of humor and pathos. Finally, it’s a beautifully designed and produced work. This book is, like its companion Women in Congress 1917-2006, a work of great craftsmanship, and should be acknowledged as such. Black Americans in Congress, 1870-2007 is the sort of book you buy to keep and hand down to your children. So buy it, hand it down, and preserve the memory of those who came before President Obama. Please become a fan of “New Books in African American Studies” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 Leslie Schwalm, “Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:59:38

[Crossposted from New Books in History] You’ve heard of “Reconstruction,” that is, the reform of the South after the Civil War. But have you heard of “Northern Reconstruction?” Probably not. I hadn’t either until I read Leslie Schwalm’s superb new book Emancipation’s Diaspora: Race and Reconstruction in the Upper Midwest (University of North Carolina Press, 2009). We tend to think of the Civil War as a Northern fight against Southern slavery. It was that to some extent. But, in our rush to congratulate ourselves on liberating those in Southern bondage, we tend to overlook the fact that blacks living in the North were treated none too well by the majority white residents. Being anti-slavery didn’t mean being pro-African American. In this meticulously researched book, Leslie traces the history of the African American migration to the Upper Midwest (Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota) during and after the war. It’s not a very pretty picture. The whites in the area were not at all receptive to the idea that emancipated slaves would live among them. White Midwesterners had deprived African Americans of their civil rights before the war and they had every intention of doing the same after the war. They were hostile to the emancipated migrants and did everything they could to see that they were kept “in their place.” That’s why even the North had to be “reconstructed.” Read this book. It will change what you think, and that can’t be said for every history. Please become a fan of “New Books in African American Studies” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 Todd Moye, “Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:01:35

[Crossposted from New Books in History] In the 1940s, the United States military preformed an “experiment,” the substance of which was the formation of an all-black aviation unit known to history as the “Tuskegee Airmen.” In light of the honorable service record of countless African Americans, allowing blacks to become fighter and bomber pilots might not seem very “experimental” to you, but you have to put yourself in the mindset of the era in question to understand how “experimental” it was. Jim-Crow segregation was nearly universal, especially, though not exclusively, in the South. The armed forces were similarly segregated, with blacks serving in what might be mildly called “auxiliary roles” and whites doing all the commanding and fighting. There were few black officers (and they never supervised white troops) and no black military pilots. Most of the (nearly all white) “brass” could not conceive of integrated units and doubted the ability of African Americans to serve as line officers; most of those in the majority white voting public shared these views. When the argument to native ability failed (after all, black units had performed well in the Civil War and World War I), opponents of integration fell back on a familiar argument: if “we” allow “them” to serve with “us,” chaos will ensue and fighting effectiveness will suffer. But black leaders didn’t buy it; they wanted integration. The Roosevelt administration sat on the fence. It clearly couldn’t embark on full-scale integration (and, it must be said, FDR himself had doubts about it), but it couldn’t forgo black votes. So it compromised: blacks would get one high-profile flying unit, but integration would be deferred. And so the great experiment began. Todd Moye has mined the archives and talked to the airmen to tell the tale of how said experiment proceeded in his terrific Freedom Flyers: The Tuskegee Airmen of World War II (OUP, 2010). It’s a tale I found both uplifting and shocking. I’m not usually one to heap praise on people, but the pilots themselves were remarkably brave. It is hard for me to imagine what they went through to get their wings and fight for the country they loved. I found myself again and again asking “How could they do that?” Todd does a terrific job of setting the scene and helping us understand their struggle. I confess I find it just as hard to enter the mindset of those whites who stood against them. They were racists and more frighteningly racists with absolutely clean consciences. When they said that blacks didn’t have the “right stuff” to become pilots, to command troops, to serve in integrated units, they believed it. Their testimony, again very ably related by Todd, is simply difficult to read. Here too I found myself asking again and again “How could they do that?” It was a different world. Parts of it, however, are obviously still with us. What is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” but the executive branch’s attempt to find a “middle way” between integrationists and their opponents? Harry Truman, where are you now? Please become a fan of “New Books in African American Studies” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 Kevin Mumford, “Newark: A History of Race, Rights and Riots in America” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:45:07

[Crossposted from New Books in History] Today we feature an interview with Kevin Mumford about his new book Newark: A History of Race, Rights and Riots in America (New York University Press, 2007). Dr. Mumford is an Associate Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Iowa, where he also serves as the current Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of History and the Academic Coordinator of the Sexual Studies Program. He is the author of many articles and the book, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century (Columbia University Press, 1997). In this week’s interview, we discussed Dr. Mumford’s latest book, Newark: A History of Race, Rights and Riots in America. David Roediger of the University of Illinois raves that “Meticulously researched and engagingly written, Newark tells an important story.” Please become a fan of “New Books in African American Studies” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 Kyra Hicks, “This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 0:58:56

[Crossposted from New Books in History] I’ll tell you something I’ve never really understood: the difference between “art” and “craft.” Yes, I get the sociological difference (“art” is made in New York and Paris; “craft” is made in Omaha and Wichita), but what about the substantive difference? One common way to differentiate the two is to say “art” is not functional and “craft” is functional. You can’t sit on a painting but you can sit on a chair. If that’s the difference, then the “Museum of Modern Art” in New York should be called the “Museum of Modern Art and Craft,” because it’s full of (not very comfortable) furniture. I also cannot really comprehend the difference between “insider art” and “outsider art.” Again, I get the sociological distinction (see above), but who gets to say who’s inside and who’s outside? And if there’s “insider art” and “outsider art,” is there “insider craft” and “outsider craft?” All I know is this: there was a freed slave named Harriet Powers who made really beautiful, highly literate, and deeply religious quilts. In the world of quilting (which is much bigger than you think), Powers is a bit like Vermeer: not many pieces, but all highly valued. And like Vermeer, she’s interesting because we don’t know a lot about her. In This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces (2010), Kyra Hicks does her best to fill in the many blanks. The book is a combination detective story, journey of discovery, and guide to further research. Hicks, a master quilter herself, doggedly pursues every lead she can find regarding the mysterious Powers, and they take her to some very unexpected places (for example, Keokuk, Iowa). The picture of Powers that emerges from This I Accomplish is that of a skilled, religiously-inspired artist, confident and proud of her work, moving through a long-forgotten world of African American quilters. If you know any quilters (and I know you do), this book would make an excellent gift. If you’d like to see Powers’ quilts for yourself, they are held by the National Museum of American History (part of the Smithsonian) in Washington and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Please become a fan of “New Books in African American Studies” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 Colin Grant, “Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:11:42

[Crossposted from New Books in History] Today we are happy to have Colin Grant on the show. Colin is that rare breed of writer who is also an excellent historian. Or is that “rare breed of historian who is also an excellent writer?” I’m not sure, but I can tell you that Negro With A Hat: The Rise and Fall of Marcus Garvey (Oxford UP, 2008) is a great book. The subject matter couldn’t be more interesting and the prose is as delightful as it is instructive. There are many laugh-out-loud, I-wish-I were-that-clever sentences in this book: “Scott was not to know that the UNIA leader was of the school of thought that translated ‘no’ as ‘maybe’ and maybe’ as ‘yes.’” And many others that will make you sad. Grant is that kind of writer and Garvey that kind of figure. Go buy this book. Then read it. Please become a fan of “New Books in African American Studies” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

 Aram Goudsouzian, “King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 1:02:47

[Crossposted from New Books in History] I imagine the guys who first faced Bill Russell felt like I did when I had to guard Antoine Carr in high school. I “held” Carr to 32 points. But no dunks! Russell’s opponents in college and the NBA rarely fared any better. Sports talk is full of hyperbole, but in Russell’s case most of it is true. In his time, he was far and away the best player to ever step on the court and, for most of his career, he completely owned every court he stepped on. He was so dominant that they changed the rules so less gifted players would have a chance. Bill Russell, however, was not only a surpassingly great basketball player, he was also an African American star in an era in which being an African American star (or just being an African American) was very complicated. Today we are used to seeing outstandingly successful blacks in all (or almost all) spheres of life. In the mid-1950s that just wasn’t true. The American ruling elite was lily white, and that’s the way most white Americans thought it should be. Bill Russell (and Jackie Robinson, Althea Gibson, Willie Mays, Cassius Clay, Jim Brown, among others) were anomalies: they were black, but they were both extraordinarily accomplished and remarkably famous. They couldn’t just be athletes; they had to be symbols of some promising (or frightening) new world as well. That’s quite a burden to bear. In King of the Court: Bill Russell and the Basketball Revolution (University of California Press, 2010), Aram Goudsouzian has done a great service by detailing the ways Russell bore this weight, and the ways in which he fought to throw it off. Aram makes clear that Russell was a conflicted soul. He lacked self-confidence, but he was brusk and even arrogant. He was friendly and gregarious to some, but often simply rude to others. He was hot tempered, but he affected a cool, distant demeanor. He believed he was a man of principle (and convinced others he was), but he periodically abandoned his family for a playboy lifestyle. If Russell couldn’t be honest about himself, he insisted on being honest about everything and everyone around him. He meant what he said and said what he meant–about race, about sports, about anything that bothered him. He was a sort of athletic Socrates, always questioning and never fully accepting the way things were. And, like Socrates, Russell was willing to suffer for his beliefs. As Aram points out, he did in many ways. But in the process he gained the respect of almost everyone he encountered. He was a hard man to like, but he was an easy man to admire. I should add that if you like white-hot game narratives, this book is full of them. Remember this?: “Greer is putting the ball in play. He gets it out deep and Havlicek steals it! Over to Sam Jones… Havlicek stole the ball! It’s all over… It’s all-l-l-l over!” Johnny Most, RIP. Please become a fan of “New Books in African American Studies” on Facebook if you haven’t already.

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