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America
Is Still the Place
By Charlie
Walker
Read A Book Publishing, 2003 / 190 pages
Review by Marvin
X
The title of Charlie Walker's book threw me
off: for some reason. I thought the title suggested another tale
of black right wing poppycock, in the manner of Eldridge Cleaver
and now Haki Madhubuti, flag waving and praising the American
military. But no, Charlie has not sold out, but instead has
narrated a tale of tragic-comedy in the best tradition of
African American literature on the enduring theme of how I
survived, how I got ovah, yes, how I challenged the slave master
and lived to tell about it.
The story reaches the
height of classic tragic-comedy because the main character,
Charlie, is a legend in the Bay Area and most especially in the
Hunters Point district of San Francisco where he is considered
the godfather and it is said nothing happens in Hunters Point
without his approval. He owns a trucking business and is
constantly in the media fighting to gain economic parity for his
fellow residents and blacks in general. He recently challenged
presidential candidate Rev. Al Sharpton to secure reconstruction
contracts for blacks and minorities in Iraq, especially since so
many of us return in body bags from Bush's desert kingdom.
Charlie is the longtime
friend of outgoing mayor Willie L. Brown. This writer had the
pleasure to observe Charlie call Willie Brown on his car phone
and address Da Mayor thusly, "Hey, you black motherfucker,
what's goin on?"
Only a legend can do this to another legend,
so this is a story about a great man reaching new heights, but
in classic manner, falling to the depths because of character
flaws, yes, thinking he is invincible or perhaps equal to the
white man. This might be true in the metaphysical but let's stay
in the nightmarish reality of America.
So in the title is the conclusion: America is
the place the black man can still get lynched, tarred and
feathered on occasion. America is still the place affirmative
action is needed yet denied. America is still the place a black
man must never think for one moment he is equal to the white
man.
The book begins with Charlie discovering his
fellows in the trucking business are driving en masse to a job
cleaning up a Standard Oil Company spill in the Bay without him.
He follows the trail of trucks to the ocean beach and discovers
the massive job no one has bothered to inform him about, after
all he is a nigger and must be the last to know, if at all. But
his nature is brutish, aggressive and bold, so in true form, he
makes his way to see what's really going on, encountering a
fellow trucker who has already landed a contract and reluctantly
gives Charlie inside information on how he might secure a
contract to help clean up the ugly spill after two ships
collide.
One of the most important items the author
wants us to know is how racism is revealed through body language
and that for a black man to be successful in the white world, he
must master body language, the glance, the fake smile, the weak
handshake, the frown, etc. that reveal the nuances of
communication in racist America. In short, the black man must
master the games that people play in the house with the glass
ceiling called corporate America.
I don't want to tell the entire tale, but
essentially, Charlie contracts to clean Stinson Beach, in fact,
is put in charge of the entire project, and herein begins his
rise and tragic fall. After realizing the error of putting a
black man in charge of white people, especially a black man who
enjoys snorting cocaine with the townspeople and providing it to
Standard Oil executives who enjoy a night at the beach with sex
workers also provided by Charlie, they start the process of
removing him from authority, including death threats delivered
by San Francisco police. Charlie is, if nothing else, a fighter
who relishes the drama, even though it is life threatening—he
can and does threaten, yes, Standard Oil, the most powerful
corporation in the world.
In heroic fashion, Charlie survives, but in
the process is sent to prison for tax evasion, serving three
years. Again, it is clear the charges were instigated by
bloodsucking, filthy, rotten, racist Standard Oil executives. By
book's end, we have a personal relationship with the executives,
they truly help us understand the imperialist personality or the
mind of neo-white supremacists. And we come to understand the
mind of Charlie Walker, aggressive, criminal when necessary,
raw, even responsible with a sense of family loyalty and love;
creative, he actually solved the cleanup problem for Standard
Oil.
Watch out Walter Mosley, the book is a
thriller: once we start, we can't stop until the end, although
we are disappointed that Charlie's end was tragic, yet in the
African manner, comic, because he lives to tell another story
and we can't wait to read it.
We hear the book is a best seller in Hunters
Point: young brothers have bought multiple copies to share with
friends because they say, "Charlie got game." If
America
Is Still the Place inspires reading in the hood, it should
be promoted for this reason alone.
posted 20 December 2003
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What Orwell Didn't Know
Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics
By Andras Szanto
Propaganda. Manipulation. Spin. Control. It has ever been thus—or has it? On the eve of the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's classic essay on propaganda (Politics and the English Language), writers have been invited to explore what Orwell didn't—or couldn't—know. Their responses, framed in pithy, focused essays, range far and wide: from the effect of television and computing, to the vast expansion of knowledge about how our brains respond to symbolic messages, to the merger of journalism and entertainment, to lessons learned during and after a half-century of totalitarianism. Together, they paint a portrait of a political culture in which propaganda and mind control are alive and well (albeit in forms and places that would have surprised Orwell). The pieces in this anthology sound alarm bells about the manipulation and misinformation in today's politics, and offer guideposts for a journalism attuned to Orwellian tendencies in the 21st century. |
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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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Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War
By Tony Horwitz
Plotted in secret, launched in the dark, John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was a pivotal moment in U.S. history. But few Americans know the true story of the men and women who launched a desperate strike at the slaveholding South. Now, Midnight Rising portrays Brown's uprising in vivid color, revealing a country on the brink of explosive conflict. Brown, the descendant of New England Puritans, saw slavery as a sin against America's founding principles. Unlike most abolitionists, he was willing to take up arms, and in 1859 he prepared for battle at a hideout in Maryland, joined by his teenage daughter, three of his sons, and a guerrilla band that included former slaves and a dashing spy. On October 17, the raiders seized Harpers Ferry, stunning the nation and prompting a counterattack led by Robert E. Lee. After Brown's capture, his defiant eloquence galvanized the North and appalled the South, which considered Brown a terrorist. The raid also helped elect Abraham Lincoln, who later began to fulfill Brown's dream with the Emancipation Proclamation, a measure he called "a John Brown raid, on a gigantic scale."
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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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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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