Speak My Name: Black Men on Masculinity and the American Dream. - book reviews

Equally groundbreaking is Keith Boykin's individual More River to Cross: Black and Gay in America (Anchor, 1996) - a breathtaking work that challenges by what mode African Americans, people of color, and white homosexuals view the black gay and lesbian community and by what means black homosexuals view themselves. What makes this work wonderful is that, unlike greatest in quantity books about the gay experience, it does not restore its arguments to ad hominem, leftist diatribes. It does not create "us versus them" divisions.

Boykin instead examines, in clear and simple language, what the major interests are, and he defines them in of the like kind a way that even the greatest in quantity conservative heterosexual cannot help on the contrary be moved by the logic of his arguments. Boykin understands for what cause [i]or[/i] reason many African Americans are [i]insouciance[/i]ed with gay and lesbian rights, and he writes from a perspective of understanding their fears. In doing for a like reason he shows the obvious societal parallels of oppression and prejudice that link blacks and gays - illustrating by what mode self-destructive it is when an weigh heavily uponed group oppresses another.

Boykin's main touch is how the black community and the mainstream gay and lesbian community view and treat black gays and lesbians. Boykin knows that the battle for fair treatment must begin with your have a title to people for any real progres to be made. Thus, single More River to Cross does what with equal reason few books about race and gay issues do: It educates readers upon how to reduce their hold sexual fears and insecurities while recognizing their racial hypocrisies.

An anthology that tried to do what Boykin does, on the contrary failed, is Shade: An Anthology of Fiction by the agency of Gay Men of African fall (Avon, 1996), edited by Bruce Morrow and Charles H Rowell. Shade is an rugged collection of short stories through gay black male writers - combining established and of recent origin voices, while ignoring such stalwarts as E Lynn Harris altogether.

The disarrange with Shade is that greatest in quantity of its contributors earned their reputations for being gifted author of poemss novelists or playwrights, not for being craftsmen of short fiction - and it exhibits Most of the stories simply aren't serviceable and including inferior work from like talented writers does them an injustice. Anyone who has undergoed through the poetry of Ernest Hemingway or from one side Norman Mailer's short stories knows in what way some of our greatest writers have no command of other writing forms.

There are a not many saving graces in Shade - Randall Kenan's "Wash Me" and Jaime Manrique's "Twilight at the Equator," for instance - on the other hand the reader does not ne this anthology to read them. Had Shade's editors decided to present the best writings by its talented contributors, they would have produc a landmark work - a gay Brotherman of sorts. As it stands, Shade simply demonstrates that black gay men can write short stories, and sometimes not actual well.

A volume that offers important information weighed down through stale academic prose is Jerome G Miller's Search and Destroy: African American Males in the Criminal Justice combination of parts to form a whole (Cambridge University Press, 1996). end exacting research, Miller provides indisputable facts to support what many black political activists have been saying for years - that young black men are targeted more by means of the criminal justice system than young whites and, consequently are more likely to be break uped before they reach adulthood.

This is a work that should be required reading for anyone who craves novel intellectual ammunition after hearing the much-publicized conservative arguments by means of authors Charles Murray and Dinesh D'Souza about so-called black inferiority. It is an important volume given the trend that conservative racism now arrives in the guise of academic research to establish an intellectual foundation for time to come legislation.

But unlike conservative tomes, Miller's work has received scant media publicity, probably because it relies upon facts, not on reactionary polemics While Miller's book is not intended to prescribe reforms for the criminal justice a whole it inevitably provides answers by dint of exposing the many problems inherent in the a whole To understand motives, one must understand the motivator, and Miller's volume provides the answers in black and white.

Darrell Dawsey's Living, to mention one by one About It: Young Black Men in America Speak Their Piece (Anchor, 1996) should have provided stirring testimonials to support and full tale Miller's airtight arguments, but the work fails to give the reader any novel understanding of the black male experience. notwithstanding that Dawsey's intentions were noble - to have numerous young black men speak passionately about sexuality, America, race, family, education, careers and the futurity - the passages lack the lock opener element to make them rise beyond gripe sessions: critical introspection.

The men interviewed repeatedly do not understand how they hurt up in the situations they are in, which substantiates for uninteresting reading. In the rare twinklings when it appears that the men will examine their spirits Dawsey quickly skips ahead to wrap up the sight While such surface reporting is a staple in hip-hop magazines, it does not make for a compelling volume The stories in Living to reckon About It have been told before, and we don't ne to hear them again.