Customer Reviews

Black Cracker

5 star:		(10)
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3 star:		(1)
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A historical and personal autobigraphy of an atypical "white boy" in late 50's Long Island. Intentionally or not, Friedman's parents- hip, successful, and often-absent- enroll him in the last of the N.Y. segregated public schools, possibly because the only private schools available were Catholic. (Given what we now know, a wise choice.) The hapless kid uses his innate ability to adapt and even flourish among impoverished, often angry, black kids and their families during the volatile times of forced integration. Bizarre stories, unbelievable at times, with historical context provided. More a collection of individual experiences, Friedman painstakingly uses the accurate vernacular and pronunciation of the participants, to excellent effect. Raw, edgy, hilarious and often scary recollections. A slice of 60's America heretofore largely unspoken. Highly recommended. Would make a great movie, think Mad Men or Revolutionary Road.

I really didn't know what to expect when I started reading Black Cracker, but from the first chapter I was hooked. The story is compelling, the writing is vivid, the characters are endearing. Once I started, I couldn't put the book down. I laughed out loud at many things in the book but was very touched by moments as well. While the book deals with race relations and segregation in schools, it was not at all heavy-handed. In fact, race was kind of in the background for me. It's the characters themselves who drive the story. No one is all good or all evil. The characters here are portrayed as we really are, human.

Move over James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright. Oh, and Leroi Jones... oops, I mean Amiri Baraka... might as well make room on the bench, too. Josh's autobiographical novel is the quirkiest contribution to the literature of mid-20th century American race relations I have ever read, profound in a wonderfully warped way and definitely up there with the funniest... as in laugh-out-loud at the 1960s misadventures of a Candide-like po' little Jewboy in an otherwise-all-Black elementary school. Oy gevalt. Shee-it. Hot dam. Great read.

White kids who thought they were black. Some people used to call them "zebraheads," but they are known by a lot of other names, too, including the titular handle of Josh Alan Friedman's "autobiographical novel." Those easily offended by uppity black crackers beware, but for everyone else, this book dishes up laugh-out-loud responses on every page. Thrill to the stories of "Jock" Friedman's race-mixing childhood, when his benighted elders dispatched him to the last segregated elementary school on Long Island -- an experiment in politically motivated childrearing that had confusing, strange and hilarious results. At Glen Cove's South school in 1962, Josh was one of two white enrollees, soon enough to be the only one. Multiple beatings, intense friendships and Saroyan-level human comedy followed. The indelible characters of Friedman's childhood will forever live for anyone lucky enough to grab a copy of Black Cracker. In between the laughs there are some moments of nostalgic sadness for a bygone universe, and an increased respect for the bewildering varieties of human experience.

Black Cracker
When I closed the back cover on Josh Alan Friedman's Black Cracker, I couldn't help but wonder why this wasn't on the list of ten best books for absolutely every literary critic out there.
How this hasn't been embraced by the McSweeny's crowd is staggering.

Friedman is one of our great American storytellers. His textural brilliance is overshadowed only by his earnest humor. The tale he has woven from actual events in his own life is at times hilarious, heart-breaking, terrifying and triumphant. Growing up the only white kid in the last segregated school on Long Island is as unique an experience as one is ought to document, but the author makes his autobiography not only highly relatable, but universal. His fondness for the past is not rose-colored, it's honest. The frank and accurate language of the day is likely to ruffle a few feathers, but the integrity of Josh's conviction champions the truth above all other things, and he's a better writer for it. If that's not a cause célèbre, I don't know what is.

Part Mark Twain and part Jean Shepherd, Black Cracker is a modern Tom Sawyer as envisioned by Mel Brooks. If you don't own this book, you should. If you don't want to buy it for yourself, buy it for that friend or loved one seeking a story that connects on a human level without the weighty melodrama of an Oprah Book Club selection.
Just make sure you read it before you give it to them.

I too have been a long time fan of Josh Alan Friedman's writing. I've read several of his books and loved them. I knew nothing of the content of Black Cracker until my copy came to me in the mail. I'll tell you folks I was blown away. While reading the book I laughed out loud many times, something that's rare for me. The sincerity and humor of Freidman's childhood memoir has utterly blown me away and I would recommend this book to one and all!!

It blows my mind that this story is so recent--it occasionally reads like something that might have been set 100 years ago. It's an effective reminder of the stasis of poverty. You might not think a book that deals so boldly and honestly with so deep a national wound as racism could be so entertaining. The keen, innocent eye that guides the story manages to take a pretty harrowing situation and infuse it with a real sweetness. The pace never falters and before you know it, you are full of indelible images from "Jock's" childhood that will do that thing that the best books do: change the way you look at the world around you.

Josh Alan Friedman's Black Cracker is unique, enthralling and enlightening. His "autobiographical novel" approach relays childhood experiences through the more insightful eyes of an adult and mixes humor and historical facts in a way that is fresh and enlightening. It's sometimes funny, sometimes scary, always interesting. It tells you more about race relations in the 1960s than you'll ever learn through a history book. And, I was impressed by the fact that Friedman respects and sheds lights on the basic humanity of all characters, including bigoted white crackers and black reverse racists. I've never read anything quite like it and I enjoyed it immensely.

I've been a fan of Josh's for some time, but I had no idea what to expect when I began this (aside from the obvious.) The characters are riveting - Bobo, Mumsy, Miss Grimby, the terrifying-to-oddly-maternal O'Leary, and at the heart of which is young moptopped Josh, caught in the center of some serious changing times. You won't be able to put it down. Funny, heartbreaking and evocative of a New York long gone (oh, Penn Station) - "Cracker" is a must-read.

The most daring and honest writers I know would never presume to describe themselves that way. Indeed, they are more often than not unaware of how their explosively luminous work effects others.

Josh Friedman is without question that sort of writer. And Black Cracker, as fictional memoir, falls into the category of blazing truths -- incredibly funny and devastatingly honest.

So true, so honest, Black Cracker will make you roar with laughter, weep with sorrow, and simultaneously be afraid to utter the thoughts in your heart.

I found my nightly dreams infused by Black Cracker. I found myself carried away in dream after dream upon journeys the author had charted in his book. Only my deeper subconscious mind could continue along the paths of horror and beauty he unfolded on the pages of Black Cracker.

Indeed, these truths are far too uncomfortable to handle for those whose conceptual universe has been programmed to be meek, inoffensive, idealistic, and false.

In other words, the denizens of literary Political Correctness.

That Black Cracker came and went almost unnoticed by the MSM in record time can not be construed as merely the result of the global publishing crisis. It is much more a result of cherishing the mote in one's eyes, the ignoring of uncomfortable social truths which can and should be spoken of, which can and should be uttered without demolishing the love in one's heart.

These uncomfortable truths, as presented in Black Cracker, are the vexations carried by many within Black America.

To make that statement is NOT racist. It is simple and clear.

A true writer, a courageous writer, is a writer who loathes perfumed lies. He is also a man with great love in his heart and unflinching vision. One feels this upon each page of Black Cracker. It isn't flaunted. It isn't pretense.

It is the love of Josh Alan Friedman for Black America, a love which has apparently shaped his whole life as writer and musician.

While outwardly an "unflinching and often hilarious funhouse tour of Friedman's Long Island boyhood", what we have beneath the yucks is a panorama of Black America's heartbreaking sorrow, much of it from bias by whites yet far too much of it self created.

Friedman chronicles these tales without flinching. For this, for the beauty and soulfulness and compassion he brings to each story he tells, Black Cracker should be honored, widely circulated and widely read.

I urge it to be read by all readers determined to uncover truth in contemporary writing -- a quality rare and wondrous in itself.

Black Cracker accomplishes that with great success.