When I was younger there were certain Americans authors that I just loved, while I had little patience for the others who were supposed to be so much better according to my English teachers.
Here are the ones I read the most: James Baldwin, Amiri Baraka, June Jordan, Jack Kerouac, Henry David Thoreau, Sinclair Lewis, Ntozake Shange, Noam Chomsky, Gloria Naylor, Erich Fromm, Edward Said, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Lewis Mumford.
Half are black, half are white. Two are foreign-born. But there is something that 10 of the 14 have in common: early in their lives they all lived in the same bit of America: Uptown Manhattan, Manhattan north of 110th Street in New York. Like me.
As far as I know Thoreau, Chomsky, Sinclair Lewis and Alice Walker have never lived there. But the other ten have, either in Harlem or at one of the universities next to it (or both):
- Harlem: Baldwin, Naylor, Hurston, Jordan, Baraka
- Barnard: Jordan, Shange, Hurston
- Columbia: Baraka, Kerouac, Fromm, Said
- City College: Mumford
Themes and ideas that keep coming up in these authors, whether they are black or white:
- Many of the things you hear about America are self-serving lies.
- If you are not careful, American society will make you into a soulless machine.
- Most Americans are cut off from their own true feelings.
- A hollow falseness lies at the heart of mainstream America.
- American society has injustice built right into it.
- America is split down the middle by race.
- See things as they are, not as everyone says they are or wish they were.
- Money and progress are not necessarily always good things.
- In the end it all comes down to power.
Of course, some of these are things you can know just by being black anywhere in America.
Manhattan north of 110th Street is not part of apple-pie America. The image of Harlem becomes burned into your mind forever. The poverty. The rank injustice of race. It is so overpowering that it can cut through the blindness of even white people. At least some of them.
So even if you have money, even if you have white skin, even if you have had the best that America has to offer, it is hard to live there and believe that America is anywhere near as wonderful as it seems on television or in the history books. Not if you are honest. Not if you value the truth. Not if you see with your own two eyes.
The big smile that has been pasted over America comes to seem like the big lie.
And the angry things that Michelle Obama says make complete sense to you. The Southside of Chicago seems to be the same sort of place. And you start to wonder if Barack Obama, who once went to Columbia and has lived in the Southside all these years, you wonder if he truly means everything he says or if he is just kissing up to the mainstream.
But at least you know he knows. You do not know if John McCain knows.
Postscript (2014): Obama is kissing up to the mainstream all the way. Sickeningly so.
See also:
- Uptown
- Apple-pie America
- writers:
- Barack Obama
- Michelle Obama
- John McCain
- Stuff I Might Like – based on the insight gained in this post.
Hello Abagond,
Northern Manhattan is a hotbed of writing talent.
I won’t be commenting this weekend due to the death of my beloved grandmother. My prayers go out to my family in the time of grief. I’m very sad at my grandmother’s passing. I was close to my grandmother and I deeply love my grandmother so much and she will be deeply missed by me and my family.
May my grandmother rests in peace.
S. Renee Baldwin
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I am so sorry. I knew she was sick. I will keep you in my prayers. If there is anything at all that I can do for you, let me know.
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Blessings to you and your family in this time Stephanie B.
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To all of you,
Thank you for the sympathies in this time of grief.
Steph
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Wow, great post!
(Sorry to change the tone here, but I don’t know Steph . . .)
I read a lot of those authors as a kid too, and Kurt Vonnegut, Anne Tyler, Raymond Carver, many others. But mostly white, unfortunately. It wasn’t until I got to college that other people started turning me on to non-white authors. The white suburbs will do that to a person, especially one who’s white like me.
To your excellent list of themes, I would add this one, having read a lot more non-white authors by now: All Americans would like to taken on individual terms for who they really are–rather than for who others think they are–but only some Americans are allowed to do that.
(In terms of race, that means of course that white folks don’t have to carry around that Du Boisian double consciousness.)
I found your blog through a comment you left on mine. The approval you expressed there is mutual. I’ll be back, for sure.
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Great post. I spent a year doing an artistic internship at St. John the Divine on 110th. I hope I was close enough for some of it to rub off.
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Yeah, it did rub off – or something like it, based on your blog.
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Macon D: I never heard of Raymond Carver. I will have to check him out.
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Awesome post. I’ll come back here for sure.
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Raymond Carver is probably the best short story writer of the second half of the 20th century. However, he died in 1988, at the age of 50.
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abagond, you listed:
James Baldwin — good.
Amiri Baraka — you mean Leroy Jones, the conspiracy theorist.
Jack Kerouac — good.
Henry David Thoreau — good.
Sinclair Lewis — dated.
Noam Chomsky — nut.
Edward Said — anti-Semitic nut
I noticed that Ralph Ellison — Invisible Man — is not on your list. He is probably the best black writer of the 20th century.
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Great post. Even though I am late to the party here. I will add more of these authors to my list.
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