Africa Speaks [Hardcover]

Mark Goldblatt (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2002

"A salaam aleichem, in the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate, the one true God. Yo, yo, yo, I'd like to send a shout out to my people, to my kings and queens. You know what I'm saying? My kings and queens. Yo, and a special shout out to my soldiers, my niggas in arms, the One-Forty-Ninth Street Crew--vagina findas, no doubt. Crazy mad dawgs! I got nothing but love for you. . . ."

So begins the confession of Africa Ali, a twenty-three year old black man who is determined to "get the truth out" through a series of weekly interviews with an anonymous white sociologist. His tape-recorded monologues recount the adventures of the 149th Street Crew, a group of friends clinging to the vestiges of their youthful alliances and confronting the awful uncertainties of their futures. In the course of his reminiscences and philosophical musings, Africa introduces us to other members of the Crew: his best friend Hercules, his former lover Keisha, the student radical Jerome and the determined realist Eddy. When, on occasion, Africa cannot make the interviews himself, he dispatches one of his friends in his place; their differing perspectives on events Africa has previously narrated create a kind of Rashoman effect, revealing simmering grudges and petty jealousies among Crew members. As the story unfolds, terrible secrets emerge from Africa's past.

By turns shockingly funny and appallingly sad, Africa Speaks is a portrait of young people on the cusp of both self-realization and self-ruin.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This ambitious debut novel from a white news columnist struggles only sometimes successfully, with Goldblatt's remarkable ear for idiom to debunk the notion that only African-Americans can truly understand the experiences of African-Americans. The novel is essentially a monologue, in which Africa Ali, a young, volatile and confused black man, spews his adventures and opinions to a white sociologist. He visits weekly, although some weeks he sends his friends instead also young, volatile, confused and black. These characters are used in an attempt to peel away the complexities of black rage and define the contradictory Africa Ali. With his friend Hercules, Africa beats and robs homosexuals; he pushes weed; he hates whites, particularly "bloodsucking Jews" and "faggots." He's a deadbeat dad who brags of his many female conquests and the virtues of philandering: "You got to treat a bitch like she's a bitch." Then he meets a beautiful Asian woman named Liang. Their peculiar dynamic two disparate personalities from two oft-marginalized races in America affords the novel some of its more profound passages. Unfortunately, the characters' laments are too often limited to dubious conspiracy theories and infatuations with a predictable cast Tawana, O.J., Mumia, Jesse. As a result, Africa and the others rarely defy expectations, devolving into caricatures. Goldblatt ultimately does more to perpetuate longstanding stereotypes than to push readers to the brink of new understanding.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review

"An oddity, this story of New York street-smart black life by columnist Goldblatt is actually both hip and moving." -- Kirkus Reviews (December 1, 2001)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Permanent Pr Pub Co (February 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157962037X
• ISBN-13: 978-1579620370
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,359,721 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Goldblatt is a novelist, columnist and book reviewer as well as a college professor at Fashion Institute of Technology of the State University of New York.

His controversial first novel, Africa Speaks, a satire of black urban culture, was published in 2002 by The Permanent Press. His second novel, Sloth, a comedic take on postmodernism, was published in June 2010 by Greenpoint Press.

Goldblatt is perhaps best known as a political commentator. He has written hundreds of opinion pieces for a combination of the New York Post, the New York Times, USA Today, the Daily News, Newsday, National Review Online and the American Spectator Online. He has been a guest on the Catherine Crier Show on Court TV and done dozens of radio interviews for stations across the country and in England. His integrity has been called into question by the Village Voice - which should count for something.

Goldblatt's book reviews have appeared in The Common Review, Commentary, Reason Magazine, and the Webzine Ducts. His academic articles have appeared in Philosophy Now, Academic Questions, Sewanee Theological Review, English Renaissance Prose, Issues in Developmental Education 1999, the Encyclopedia of Tudor England and the Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Painful truth, June 7, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Africa Speaks (Hardcover)

So how does a mature Jewish professor dare to write a novel in street dialect about a young black man, and how could it be done well? Well, the first question doesn't require an answer. He did it. And the second is answered by the book. It's fine.

But what is its value? What does fiction do, at its best? It allows us to inhabit a person that we could hardly understand otherwise. Here we have white America's worst nightmare depicted: a young tough smart black man who doesn't give a damn.

Now black writers may feel that Goldblatt is poaching on their reservation. But foreignness can give a writer an advantage. And there's another advantage here to not being black. A black writer has a complex reaction to this character too. He or she is as likely to be afraid of such guys as a white; plus there's some group solidarity - don't expose this side of our people in front of the outsiders. Or there's irritation at someone who is squandering his opportunities ; or there's a desire to use this character to beat up on white readers, scare them or make them feel guilty. The white author is free of those possible hang-ups.

An author may love his characters or hate them, or he may take sides. Love some, hate others. Dickens and Tolstoy I consider to be obvious examples of writers who love their characters; they love even their villains. For hatred it's hard to match Evelyn Waugh. (A Handful of Dust would be the absolute indicator.)

Here's the amazing thing about Africa Speaks. Goldblatt loves his character. He gives so much detail of the life so quickly. Violent crime, wasted educational opportunities, intolerable attitudes toward women and sex, nonsensical racist rant, these are unfortunate details in a man who may not be lovable, but is loved anyway. But how do I know Goldblatt loves Africa Ali? Chuang Tzu and the fishes. The Chinese philosopher walking along the stream comments on the joy of the fishes. His companion complains that he couldn't possibly know that. He responds that he knows by the joy he feels watching them.

So here's what this book does. It lets urban middle class white readers enter into a relationship of love with a character that they see every day, but will never be close to. This is not the relationship they will have with the pathetic Bigger Thomas, for sure. Easy Rawlins, Mosley's detective hero, may be enjoyable, and likable but no more real than a TV cop. And not BAD. Black male figures in literature are either not the man we fear, or not a man we can love. Africa Ali is both. Isn't that something.

The unobtrusive frame of the story is that Africa has volunteered to state his view of life to a sociology prof with a tape recorder who buys him Chinese lunch. Africa isn't the only character. On days when he can't make it he sends friends. A promiscuous black woman who loves him, an ambitious young man working a menial job to start a normal life, and a pompous young Afrocentric university student. They are all presented lovingly. In the background is another friend, a real violent gangster. He never appears. Goldblatt's benevolence, perhaps, could not stretch so far.

The street attitude toward sex, and the nonsensical prating of Afrocentrist rant should be funny, but the urban pathology is simply too painful for these vivid raps to be really hilarious. Guys like Africa, however, are eloquent performers in a style that is constructed to be amusing, and the author puts it down wonderfully well. So it's amusing even if not funny(?) Still, for a piece of sociology combined with linguistics and rolled into a fictional package, it's great.

The fact that this significant book is not widely reviewed in periodicals is a scandal.

28 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Judge for yourself, November 5, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Africa Speaks (Hardcover)

I wouldn't be writing this review except for the last couple of reviews which imply that Goldblatt should not have written this because he's white, or that he doesn't get the language of hip hop exactly right. I read this book right after it came out, and I am a big time fan of hip hop, and I can tell you he got the language just right. Not to say he got it exactly the way it's spoken on the street. If he tried to do that, the book would have been dated before it ever got published--since hip hop slang changes every week. (That's one of hip hop's strengths.) What Goldblatt does is he invents a kind of essential hip hop language--close enough to sound real but still understandable to non-hip hop fans. Then he uses that language to tell the story of Africa Ali, who is the main narrator. The things Africa says may not be pretty, but they're true in the way that only fiction can be true; they're true to the character of Africa. It's easy to say, but I'll say it anyway: I personally guarantee you'll laugh out loud and cry out loud in the course of reading this book. You'll love every character in the book, and you'll root for them, and you'll read the book over and over just to hear their voices again. This is everything ia classic should be. And if you don't read it because other readers, with axes to grind, put you off it, it will be your loss.

31 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars startling and challenging, January 14, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Africa Speaks (Paperback)

I found this book compelling and convincing. Its stark portrayal of the logical consequences of the rap ethos, its bleak humor, and its engaging characters take this beyond the question of idiom or stereotype. Whether posturing for the interviewer or puzzling out the mystery of racism, Africa Ali and his cohorts seem desperate to tell their stories, and it seems to me that those stories -- authentic or not -- deserve to be told. If the stories frighten the whites and frustrate the blacks, so much the better.

Novels may be the ideal space in which to consider and encounter otherness. Africa's life and language are alien to me, and so is urban black culture in general. Reading this novel, knowing it was written by a white man, forced me to decide where my own sympathies (and pathologies) might be located. If rap were turned into narrative, would it be like this? If I find these characters sympathetic, does that make me a racist because, as some reviewers have said, they are stereotypes? Or does it mean that I have broken through the stereotypes to their humanity? Maybe the important thing is to be asking the question. This novel startled and challenged me, and that's a good thing.

Unfortunately, the controversy over whether a white man can legitimately write a novel about black culture speaks volumes about the strangle-hold identity politics has taken on America: perhaps our desire for authenticity, and our wish that the oppressed might speak for themselves, has closed doors to creativity that ought to be left open. In any case, I plan to teach this book in my class on Contemporary American Literature, and let the students debate the question.