The author’s depiction of the culture’s racial dynamic will surely cause a stir.
A provocative, illuminating novel that imagines the inner life and explores the cultural legacy of Bert Williams, the first popular black stage performer of America’s early 20th century.
Born in the West Indies, Williams delighted white audiences and embarrassed his family and associates by playing the bumbling, slow-witted “coon” or “nigger,” corking his visage in blackface. He considered this stereotype a peculiarly American phenomenon, unknown in his homeland. Was he the artistic creator of his role, or was he the prisoner of it? Williams claimed that the caricature should not offend since it had no basis in reality, but it plainly reinforced a popular prejudice, one that put strict limitations on acceptable roles for a performer of his color. West India–born novelist and cultural critic Phillips (A Distant Shore, 2003, etc.) employs Williams to explore themes of racial identity and the twisted relationship between black artists and white audiences. Though generally avoiding polemic, the novel’s implications extend from the minstrelsy of a hundred years ago to the marketing of today’s hip-hop and gangsta rap. While interspersing snippets from stage productions and newspaper accounts, the novelist takes considerable creative license in fictionalizing the reflections of the comic entertainer, a man of sad dignity and ambiguous sexuality who keeps the various parts of his life compartmentalized. Structured into three acts, the novel traces the rise and fall of the team of Williams and the more assertively political George Walker, whose partnership formed the first all-black company to achieve success on Broadway, a triumph both enhanced and undermined by Bert’s ability to play the fool. In rescuing Williams’s reputation from obscurity, Phillips gives his leading man a tragic dimension. As times were changing—from Harlem’s transformation into a nightlife mecca to the heavyweight championship of Jack Johnson to the assertive activism of W.E.B. Dubois—Williams couldn’t change with them.
The author’s depiction of the culture’s racial dynamic will surely cause a stir.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-4396-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.
Written with quiet dignity that builds to a climax of tragic force, this book about the dissolution of an African tribe, its traditions, and values, represents a welcome departure from the familiar "Me, white brother" genre.
Written by a Nigerian African trained in missionary schools, this novel tells quietly the story of a brave man, Okonkwo, whose life has absolute validity in terms of his culture, and who exercises his prerogative as a warrior, father, and husband with unflinching single mindedness. But into the complex Nigerian village filters the teachings of strangers, teachings so alien to the tribe, that resistance is impossible. One must distinguish a force to be able to oppose it, and to most, the talk of Christian salvation is no more than the babbling of incoherent children. Still, with his guns and persistence, the white man, amoeba-like, gradually absorbs the native culture and in despair, Okonkwo, unable to withstand the corrosion of what he, alone, understands to be the life force of his people, hangs himself. In the formlessness of the dying culture, it is the missionary who takes note of the event, reminding himself to give Okonkwo's gesture a line or two in his work, The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger.
This book sings with the terrible silence of dead civilizations in which once there was valor.Pub Date: Jan. 23, 1958
ISBN: 0385474547
Page Count: 207
Publisher: McDowell, Obolensky
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1958
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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