Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White |
Buy Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White here, one of 750 Black Plague books offered for sale at discount prices here in the history books section at R bookshop. There are currently 85663 history books in our history books section, and over 1,000,000 books listed in our book store. We greatly appreciate your patronage at R bookshop and look forward to offering you a large selection of great books at discount prices now and in the future. Thank you for shopping at R Bookshop!
|
You Are Here: Home > History Books > Black Plague > Item 132
|
Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White
|
by David R. Roediger
Sales Rank: 215151
|
List Price: $17.00
$15.44
At Amazon
on 8-5-2008.
|
|
|
|
Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 368 pages
Published by: Schocken; 1st Pbk. Ed edition January 9, 1999
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0805211144
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0805211146
Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
Weighs: 11.7 ounces
Product Review
American literature boasts a long history of white authors writing about blacks. From Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, to Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial study of ethnicity and intelligence, The Bell Curve, the right of white writers to examine the lives of black people is accepted without comment. But where are the commentaries by black writers on white culture? They exist, to be sure--Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston, to name just a few, have all written on the subject of "white folk"--but little if any of this work ever makes it into the consciousness of mainstream America. This new anthology might just change all that.
Edited by David R. Roediger, Black on White brings together some of the most succinct writing ever on what it means to be white--from the African American point of view. Consider, for example, William J. Wilson's satiric "What Shall We Do with the White People?": For many centuries now have they been on this continent; and for many years have they had entire rule and sway; yet they are today no nearer the solution of the problem, "are they fit for self-government"--than they were at the commencement of their career. Or bell hooks's critical "Representations of Whiteness in the Black Imagination": Usually white students respond with naïve amazement that black people critically assess white people from a standpoint where "whiteness" is the privileged signifier. Their amazement that black people watch white people with a critical "ethnographic" gaze, is itself an expression of racism. Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison, and Alice Walker are just a few of the heavy-hitters included in an anthology that runs the gamut of African American writers and thinkers. --Alix Wilber
From Library Journal
These two books belong to a growing body of work that looks at white identity through African American writings. Historian Roediger (Towards the termination of Whiteness, Norton, 1994) here collects illuminating views of "whiteness" from black writers ranging from such early figures as the revolutionary David Walker to contemporaries like Toni Morrison. Some of the expected sources are here, including James Baldwin's Going To Meet the Man and Richard Wright's Black Boy, but among several delightful surprises are George S. Schuyler's essay "Our White Folks" and Alice Walker's "The Dummy in the Window: Joel Chandler Harris and the Invention of Uncle Remus." Although the anthology includes a range of perspectives, Roediger has essentially excluded "the more reflexively antiwhite tradition represented (at times) by the nation of Islam, or by Leonard Jeffries's recent writing on whites." This results in some notable omissions, including Malcom X. Still, this is a valubable collection that should go a long way in helping us to understand America's troubled racial relations. Recommended for all collections. Sartwell (philosophy, Pennsylvania State Univ.) analyzes the perception of whiteness in the slave narratives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs, the writings of W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, and Malcolm X, and contemporary rap music. He contends that whites, in seeking to establish their identity as the norm, ultimately render themselves invisible. Furthermore, white identity is typically constructed in comparison with nonwhite identities, often portraying the latter as inferior, he notes. Through the writings of African Americans, Sartwell believes whiteness can be viewed in a more objective manner. At the same time that he seeks to elucidate the texts, he grapples with his own whiteness. In the process, he has presented an engaging though disturbing investigation of the complex politics of identity. Recommended for academic libraries.?Louis J. Parascandola, Long Island Univ., Brooklyn Campus, NY
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Back To Top
|
Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White
Available from Amazon
Price: $15.44
Updated on 8-5-2008.
|
NOTICE: All prices, availability, and specifications
are subject to verification by their respective retailers.
| We offer Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White and other related Black Plague Books here at Rbookshop.com. To view more books about Black Plague please use the previous and next buttons near the top of this page.
|
|
Search for books at
