In reaction against portrayals of blacks as pimps and hustlers,
anthropologist Gwaltney (Syracuse) here presents interviews with 41
black relatives, friends, and acquaintances. While the individuals
are of interest and a group portrait does emerge, the enterprise
would have been better served by a less loving hand. All 41 are
presented as unbelievably noble in the short but saccharine
individual introductions (e.g., "If life were a matter of rich
recompense for noble service, Mrs. Surrey's wealth and happiness
would defy estimation"). Most are poor yet worthy, suffering
muggings and discrimination with equal dignity. Throughout,
Gwaltney tries to develop his idea of "core black culture," a
culture not dependent on or derivative of white culture and whose
values range from sacrifice for family and kin to tolerance,
nationhood, and soul food. The people interviewed serve as cultural
models as they hold forth on whites ("White folk are how folks and
black folks are what folks"), on the importance of names ("If it's
not worth the trouble to you to find out what I want to be called,
then don't bother to call at all"), and on "turn," the traditional
civility required of children and young adults toward their elders.
Not all is peaches and cream, however, as others describe
traditional divisions among blacks based on color and on sex ("When
you come right down to it, white women just think they are free.
Black women know they ain't free"). Most condemn welfare, along
with drugs, as two ways of getting hooked; and many of these
lace-curtain blacks fear the day-to-day dangers of the street. An
antidote to seamy portrayals of ghetto life, but too generous a
dosage. (Kirkus Reviews)
In writing his "Self-Portrait of Black America," anthropologist,
folklorist, and humanist John Gwaltney went in search of "Core
Black People"--the ordinary men and women who make up black
America--and asked them to define their culture. Their responses,
recorded in "Drylongso," are to American oral history what blues
and jazz are to American music. If the people in William H.
Johnson's and Jacob Lawrence's paintings could talk, this is what
they would say.
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