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Books by Walter Mosley
What Next:
A Memoir Toward World Peace /
Life Out of Context /
Devil in A Blue Dress /
Fear of the Dark (audiobook )
Little Scarlet (An Easy Rawlins Novel) /
Cinamon Kiss (audiobook) /
This Year You Write Your Novel /
Fortunate Son
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A Naïve
Political Treatise
A Review of Walter Mosley's
Life Out of Context
By Rodney D. Foxworth, Jr.
Of the canonized American literary works,
James Baldwin's exquisite, provocative The Fire Next Time is
one of the few that have left an indelible impress upon both my
heart and mind. Essay compilation was assigned reading for my
12th grade English Literature class, alongside other works
produced by African American authors considered essential
reading—Invisible Man, Native Son, Black Boy,
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Bluest Eye
and Their Eyes Were Watching God included.
Of course, as a 17-year-old high school
student, I was unable to appreciate the poetic beauty and biting
tongue of Baldwin's pen. It wasn't until a year later while on
leave from university that I discovered the magnificence of
Baldwin's talents, which are on full display in what is easily
one of his most popular works.
It can then be reasoned that comparing
Walter Mosley's latest monograph,
Life Out of Context
, to
The Fire Next Time—as Mosley's publisher has done—is
a bit overzealous, as Baldwin stands as one of the most
memorable African American memoirists and essayists of the 20th
century. Of course, had Nation Books not made the comparison
many others would have done so for them—it is simply a
comparison that is too difficult not to make.
Mosley is America's most recognized and
praised black male writer and social critic, and Baldwin
occupied that very same position during Civil Rights America.
The similarities end here, however. Baldwin's prose is
enthralling and explosive; Mosley's is layman like, direct and
to the point. And while The Fire Next Time nags at one's
conscience and forces one to question their own reality, Life
Out of Context acts as a sort of naïve political treatise
crafted in the hopes of extinguishing the next time fire that
has arrived.
Mosley begins this svelte book—only
104 pages long—with meditations on the space he occupies as an
artist and his identity as a writer. Mosley describes this
self-indulgent interrogation as necessary in his quest to
realize his "own feelings and therefore [his] chances for
liberation." Mosley relishes in this emancipatory act,
concluding "The contexts of other writers' lives are closed
to me. I don't associate with them. I don't do work that would
get me access to their clubs. There's nothing else to say about
it."
Content with his lot in life, Mosley moves
into a sweeping discussion that touches on issues of racism,
politics, generational conflict, and globalism.
"They [white slave owners and whites in
general] oppressed us," laments Mosley, writing on behalf
of Black America. But Mosley does not end with this lament;
instead, he further pushes the boundary.
"How can we call ourselves victorious in
a real sense when people live in virtual economic slavery in so
many parts of the globe?" asks Mosley, in reference to the
gains made by the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Mosley
holds a mirror to Black America, and the image reflected back
might be shocking: "We are becoming what we have fought so
bravely against, and in becoming our enemy, we stumble and
fall."
Here, Mosley directs a finger toward Black
America, alleging that Black America is culpable, too, for many
of the world's inequalities and suffering. "Black America
is America," he writes. No longer will Black Americans be
exempt from condemnation or criticism when talk of American
arrogance and indifference comes up. Instead, Mosley demands
that Black Americans take a moral stand and accept the
responsibility that comes along with being an American.
"We became members of the society, no
matter how much that society might vilify us. And our membership
carries with it responsibility, not only for our own suffering
but also for those that suffer because of us and in spite of our
victories."
And how might we carry out our
responsibility? Mosley takes the role of lay political
philosopher, arguing for a Black Political Party. Having
discredited the Republican and Democratic Parties, Mosley lays
forth his ideas of a distinct Black Political Party. "As
long as you vote Democrat," writes Mosley "as long as
you vote Republican, you will be ensuring that true democracy
has no chance of existing."
None of this is particularly innovative
thinking. Political theorists and activists have espoused this
position for some time. And Mosley's proposal for a Black
Political Party is no new idea, though the concept has been
absent from both public and political discourse for some time
now. Perhaps Mosley will breathe life into the debate, though
this is unlikely. While The Fire Next Time grabbed
America by the jugular,
Life Out of Context
has failed to
make headways in the mainstream media.
Along with his proposal for a Black Political
Party, Mosley's most heartfelt appeal is to his own generation,
those blacks formed by the Civil Rights Movement and Black
Power, whom he feels have led the present crop of African
Americans astray.
"[The young people] express their
frustration in music and we criticize them for it," writes
Mosley.
"We say, 'You are disrespectful and
self-hating.'"
"'We are your children,' they
reply."
Mosley demands that younger Black Americans
be heard, not merely criticized. "We should edit out all
cynicism and derogatory notions from our voices and words,"
he writes. "These young people are our only hope. We
have to liberate them where we can, decriminalize them when
necessary, detoxify them if possible—but most important we
have to hear what they're telling us and make way for their
leadership."
Mosley's effort is a necessary work and America
needs his voice, but any comparisons to The Fire Next Time should
end immediately: The Fire Next Time is an invaluable
contribution to American letters never to be forgotten, while Life
Out of Context is a work that might never be remembered.
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Rodney D. Foxworth, Jr.
Associate Editor, LiP magazine
www.lipmagazine.org
cultural journalist & freelance writer
Ronald E. McNair Scholar
Ph.: (410) 978-0045
rdfoxworth@gmail.com
"I sit with Shakespeare, and he winces not. Across the color
line I move arm and arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men
and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out of the caves
of evening that swing between strong-limbed Earth and the
tracery of stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul
I will, and they came all graciously with no scorn nor
condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the veil."—W.E.B. Du Bois* *
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The Warmth of Other Suns
The Epic Story of America's Great
Migration
By Isabel Wilkerson
Ida Mae Brandon Gladney, a
sharecropper's wife, left Mississippi
for Milwaukee in 1937, after her cousin
was falsely accused of stealing a white
man's turkeys and was almost beaten to
death. In 1945, George Swanson Starling,
a citrus picker, fled Florida for Harlem
after learning of the grove owners'
plans to give him a "necktie party" (a
lynching). Robert Joseph Pershing Foster
made his trek from Louisiana to
California in 1953, embittered by "the
absurdity that he was doing surgery for
the United States Army and couldn't
operate in his own home town." Anchored
to these three stories is Pulitzer
Prize–winning journalist Wilkerson's
magnificent, extensively researched
study of the "great migration," the
exodus of six million black Southerners
out of the terror of Jim Crow to an
"uncertain existence" in the North and
Midwest. Wilkerson deftly incorporates
sociological and historical studies into
the novelistic narratives of Gladney,
Starling, and Pershing settling in new
lands, building anew, and often finding
that they have not left racism behind.
The drama, poignancy, and romance of a
classic immigrant saga pervade this
book, hold the reader in its grasp, and
resonate long after the reading is done.
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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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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
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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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posted 3 March 2006 /
updated 1 April 2008
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