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Chocolat (1989)
Starring:
Isaach De Bankolé, Giulia Boschi Director: Claire
Denis
"Erotic, sophisticated, and distinctive" (L.A. Weekly),
this enthralling depiction of a family's struggle during
the final years of French colonialism in Africa takes a
profound look at the intricate nature of relationships
in a racist society. A story of exclusions, betrayals
and agonizing compromises, this "remarkable and quietly
devastating" (The Boston Globe) film is truly
"extraordinary" (Interview). Curious and observant
seven-year-old France spends her days amidst the
paradise of her family's estate. But behind the
household's exterior beauty lies growing hostility
brought on by France's always-traveling father, her
bored, frustrated mother and Protee, the noble,
intelligent house "boy" who suffers the indignities of
his status in silence. But when a plane makes an
emergency landing nearby, bringing a motley collection
of characters to the house, the heavenly facade soon
begins to unravel. And a shocking explosion of rage,
racism and forbidden passion threatens to tear apart the
family forever!—Amazon.com
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The land seems
smaller at night than during the day. The horizon draws
closer, containing strange rustlings and restlessness
and the coughs of wild beasts, and voices carry a great
distance - much farther than the lights from the
veranda.
"Chocolat"
evokes this Africa better than any other film I have
ever seen. It knows how quiet the land can be, so that
thoughts can almost be heard - and how patient, so that
every mistake is paid for sooner or later. The film is
set in a French colony in West Africa in the days when
colonialism was already doomed, but no one realized it
yet. At an isolated outpost of the provincial
government, a young girl lives with her father and
mother and many Africans, including Protee, the
houseboy, who embodies such dignity and intelligence
that he confers status upon himself in a society that
will allow him none.
The story is told partly through the eyes of the young
girl, and the film opens in the present, showing her as
an adult in 1988, going back to visit her childhood
home. . . .
"Chocolat"
is one of those rare films with an entirely mature,
adult sensibility; it is made with the complexity and
subtlety of a great short story, and it assumes an
audience that can understand what a strong flow of sex
can exist between two people who barely even touch each
other.—Roger
Ebert
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I only add two
facts to Ebert's rave review of this movie. First,
France the grown woman meets an African American who
came back to Africa in the 1980s only to find
Cameroonians ripping him off, interpreting him as an
American, not as a fellow African. The other is one of
the Frenchmen on the airplane with the failed propeller
element who makes a homosexual pass at Protee, which the
latter, as the hero of the movie, violently rejects.
I suggest this
fairly inexpensive DVD movie, in French with subtitles
available in a variety of languages, to anyone concerned
about African identity in a noble, moral form, set in
the context of the French cinema verite
tradition.
I watched the movie
on my laptop on my way to a multicultural conference on
a cross country rail journey. At the conference in L.A.,
I met Utes from Colorado trying to record their valuable
norms and values for the future, and Tlingit from Alaska
trying to set the anthropologists who have studied them
aright.
I met Choctaw and
Cherokee from Oklahoma, Navaho from Arizona and New
Mexico, among others, all struggling with identity
issues over and against European and Euro-American
globalization. Three of the most moving presentations
were from a Reformed Church African American woman
Pastor from New York, a Japanese American Presbytery
Executive from California, and a Palestinian American
former Moderator of the PC (USA) General Assembly. The
churches have wrestled with the issue of moral ethnic
identities since way before I was born in 1941.
As
your journal so sharply features nowadays, there is an
ongoing, very real global struggle.—Prof. Ralph
Garlin Clingan, PhD, St. Peter's College, Jersey City,
NJ
posted 16 September
2007
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Not Gone
With the Wind Voices of Slavery—Henry Louis
Gates, Jr.—9 February 2003—Unchained Memories,
an HBO documentary that makes its debut tomorrow
night, provides a powerful answer to that question.
It gives us, through the faces and voices of
African-American actors, an introduction to a vast
undertaking that took place in the 1930's: the
collection and preservation of the testimonies of
thousands of aged former slaves in an archive known
as the Slave Narrative Collection of the Federal
Writers' Project. This archive unlocked the brutal
secrets of slavery by using the voices of average
slaves as the key, exposing the everyday life of the
slave community. Rosa Starke, a slave from South
Carolina, for example, told of how class divisions
among the slaves were quite pronounced:
''Dere was just
two classes to de white folks, buckra slave owners
and poor white folks dat didn't own no slaves. Dere
was more classes 'mongst de slaves. De fust class
was de house servants. Dese was de butler, de maids,
de nurses, chambermaids, and de cooks. De nex' class
was de carriage drivers and de gardeners, de
carpenters, de barber and de stable men. Then come
de nex' class, de wheelwright, wagoners, blacksmiths
and slave foremen. De nex' class I members was de
cow men and de niggers dat have care of de dogs. All
dese have good houses and never have to work hard or
git a beatin'. Then come de cradlers of de wheat, de
threshers and de millers of de corn and de wheat,
and de feeders of de cotton gin. De lowest class was
de common field niggers.''—NYTimes
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Super Rich: A Guide to Having it All
By Russell Simmons
Russell Simmons knows firsthand that
wealth is rooted in much more than the
stock
market. True wealth has more to do with
what's in your heart than what's in your
wallet. Using this knowledge, Simmons
became one of America's shrewdest
entrepreneurs, achieving a level of
success that most investors only dream
about. No matter how much material gain
he accumulated, he never stopped lending
a hand to those less fortunate. In
Super Rich, Simmons uses his rare
blend of spiritual savvy and
street-smart wisdom to offer a new
definition of wealth-and share timeless
principles for developing an unshakable
sense of self that can weather any
financial storm. As Simmons says, "Happy
can make you money, but money can't make
you happy." |
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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If you like this page consider making a donation
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Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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ChickenBones Store
(Books, DVDs, Music, and more)
update 26 December 2011
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