A slender volume with a substantial and significant message.
An African-American Newsweek columnist addresses a candid and compassionate open letter to the black men of America.
Cose (The Best Defense, 1998, etc.) scatters in myriad places substantial blame for what he describes—in passionate and often painful prose—as the alarming circumstances of America’s black men. “To be born a black male in America,” he writes, “is to be put into shackles and then challenged to escape.” With his characteristic wide view, Cose argues that black men have placed some of those shackles on their own ankles. He decries, for example, the determination of many black teenagers to emulate in dress and behavior the anti-intellectual (and even criminal) portions of their culture. He urges blacks to reject the new stereotypes that the popular culture promulgates. But he also recognizes that many wounds are not self-inflicted: schools in the inner city are beneath awful, and the legal and penal systems are far more punitive with blacks than whites. He cites evidence that nearly one million black men are currently in jail and that perhaps one-fourth of black men can expect to spend some time behind bars. These are numbers rich in dread and ripe with danger. But Cose also tells success stories. And so we hear about Maurice Ashley, the first (and only) black grand master in US chess history. We learn about Franklin Delano Raines (head of Fannie Mae). And about Mike Gibson, a Morehouse College student who overcame a history of drugs, crime, and prison and transformed his life. Cose also examines the difficult issues of relationships in the black family, excoriating men for their failures as fathers and husbands. But he also explodes some pervasive myths about a “war” between black men and black women. He ends with a sort of self-help list of 12 “hard truths” (some profound, some superfluous)—e.g., “Don’t expect competence and hard work alone to get you the recognition or rewards you deserve.”
A slender volume with a substantial and significant message.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2002
ISBN: 0-7434-2715-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A self-involved, amateurish tale of a trip into the world of capital punishment. Freelance journalist Goldhammer made a cross-country journey in 1990 to explore the world of state-sanctioned killing. ``If I wanted to read an in-depth report on capital punishment, I would have to write it myself,'' he declares. However, his findings don't go much beyond extant journalism, and his book is far overshadowed by Helen Prejean's Dead Men Walking (1993). Goldhammer writes in a modified diary form, with long quotes from his subjects amplified by awkward faux drama: ``In my mind, trepidation hung in the cool fall air....'' He opposes the death penalty, citing the usual, solid reasons: It's no deterrent; it's mainly applied to the poor and black; the endless appeals that follow a sentence of death are more costly than life imprisonment. His interviews contain nuggets of interest: Philosopher Hugo Bedau, author of The Death Penalty in America, declares support for the death penalty ``a mile wide and an inch deep''; much publicized Virginia inmate Joe Giarratano's legal expertise leads a guard at Giarratano's prison to say, ``Everybody here respects him.'' Goldhammer goes to a Florida prison for the execution of Ray Clark, and interviews death penalty abolitionists and supporters; he declares resonantly that the white handkerchief that indicates the execution is complete is ``a sign of surrender,'' of society giving up. In Alabama, the warden in charge of death row refuses to voice his personal views on the death penalty; he says offering education and certain privileges makes his inmates ``the best group of guys I've ever had.'' In closing, the author gives an account of a case he followed, involving a severely retarded young man who brutally killed an eight-year-old boy and was sentenced to death. Falls short both as narrative and as argument. (10 photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1994
ISBN: 1-879418-15-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
In a perceptive look at the nation's most distinctive region, Grantham (History/Vanderbilt Univ.) examines the relationship between the South and the rest of the United States during the 20th century. He delineates this relationship in terms of several major themes, exploring the modern history of sectional conflict, the many areas of compromise among the regions, cultural convergence between the South and other areas of the country (with the consequent blurring of southern culture's special features), and the persistence, nonetheless, of southern distinctiveness in the nation's consciousness. Conflict was reflected both in the mutually unflattering perceptions and attitudes of Southerners and Northerners and in substantive differences between the regions on party alignment, civil rights, Prohibition, and federal regulation of utilities, tariffs, and banks. Although it often disagreed with the Northeast, Midwest, and West on these and other issues, the South in Grantham's view pervasively influenced American politics and society as a whole in many ways. Prior to WW II and the civil rights movement, the Democratic party was controlled by its southern wing, and southern Democrats, from Richard B. Russell to Huey Long, were a powerful force in Congress, one with which successive presidents had to reckon. In more recent years conservative southern factions have demonstrated similar influence in the Republican party. With what Grantham calls the ``Second Reconstruction'' of the 1960s and with the emergence of the Sunbelt South, the region has lost its traditional hallmark of backwardness, developing an increasingly urbanized economy and becoming in many ways more prosperous and progressive than the decaying, racially polarized North. Nonetheless, Grantham argues, the South retains some of its special cultural features, including a fervent religiosity, a ``subculture of violence,'' and a profusion of literary talent, from Barry Hannah to Bobbie Ann Mason. A rich, sympathetic, warts-and-all portrait of the South.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-016773-4
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
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