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DIE, NIGGER, DIE by H. Rap. Brown

DIE, NIGGER, DIE

By

Pub Date: April 30th, 1969
Publisher: Dial

If the specter of Black Revolution is haunting America today, it is not likely to claim for its Manifesto this ill-written yawp by one of the original media-made Movement spokesmen. In Die, Nigger, Die, Mr. Brown repeats all last year's Black Power cliches, with none of the telling effect of the better works on the subject. His brief account of coming up on the streets (mainly an endless recital of success in sassing whitey) lacks the richness of Claude Brown's autobiography; his analysis of color prejudice in ""negro America"" (it's spelled with a small ""n"" in this book to set it off from the morally superior ""Black"") wants the sardonic wit of Malcolm X; and his statements on the means and aims of the Revolution miss the evocative intensity of Eldridge Cleaver. For all its sound and fury, there is no sense here of passion, of deeply felt suffering; in other words, the book is short on Soul.