edited by Rebecca Walker ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 2012
An occasionally unbalanced yet probing collection grappling with the true meaning of “Black Cool.”
A collection of essays focused on the “cool” cultural legacy of African-Americans.
In her latest work, writer/editor Rebecca Walker (Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence, 2007, etc.) assembles the writings of 16 prominent thinkers in an attempt to define “Black Cool,” a phrase utilized to encompass African-American’s self-confidence and swagger. Staceyann Chin’s “Authenticity” recounts her coming-of-age in Jamaica, during which she stumbled upon the healing powers of cool. “My newfound swagger sustained me through the rest of my teens,” she writes. “It nurtured an unyielding sense of self that served me well when I moved from Montego Bay to attend college in Kingston.” In “Geek,” Mat Johnson defines black cool by describing how it feels to lack it. A self-tagged “black geek”), he admits that “[b]lackness can be a rigid, didactic identity, with people stepping out of line facing ridicule and admonishment or worse: condemnation.” Yet Hank Willis Thomas argues that black cool needn’t be naturally possessed; it’s simply a commodity for purchase: “A crisp, clean pair of brand spanking new Air Jordan sneakers was a supreme status symbol for anyone who wanted to be cool and ‘down with the streets.’ ” Thomas takes the intangible concept of black cool and quite skillfully grounds it between a pair of Nike swooshes.” While the aforementioned essays employ personal anecdotes to spur thoughtful debate, a few of the pieces feel tonally at-odds with the rest. This is particularly true of Michaela Angela Davis’ contribution, which reads more like a fiery manifesto in which she makes clear that non-blacks can never possess “our cool ass Black style.” It’s an interesting concept, but the author’s informality and defensive tone proves less successful than the collection’s subtler pieces. Other contributors include Margo Jefferson, Veronica Chambers, Dawoud Bey and the ubiquitous Henry Louis Gates Jr., who provides the foreword.
An occasionally unbalanced yet probing collection grappling with the true meaning of “Black Cool.”Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-59376-417-3
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 4, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 23, 1955
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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developed by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Ludwig Bemelmans ; illustrated by Steven Salerno
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by Charlayne Hunter-Gault ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 1992
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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