Customer Reviews

Blacker the Berry. . .

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is a real shame this book is a "lost" classic. The characters in this book are so real I feel I might see them walking down the street.

The only flaw I can spot in Thurman's book is an over reliance on exposition. I understand he probably wished to keep the story moving and he had a lot of ground to cover, but this story just screamed for more conversation between the characters. Besides, Thurman, also a playwright, is a master at conversation.

If you are reading this, then you obviously have some sort of interest in the theme. If that's true, you owe it to yourself to read this book. I read it over a 24-hour span. I bought it for my fiance, but when I opened the box and read the first few pages, I was hooked. I told my fiance that she would have to wait until I finished it before she could get it. Luckily, it was so engrossing, I finished it the next day.

I am not afraid to look the reality of colorism in the eye and acknowledge that it does exist within the black community. It is my greatest hope and dream that someday the dark skinned black and the light skinned black will be seen as the one family in the future. I want so much to love the lightskinned sister and brother as my own reflection and not be divided from them or made to feel that one is treated better than the other, but sadly, that day is not here and this book bravely and powerfully illustrates that point to the fullest.

I am a medium brown colored woman, my mother was very dark skinned and I have witnessed the evils of skin color prejudice all my life. In most situations, it was Black Men who were prejudiced against myself and the women around me beccause of our coloring. These men felt no shame or limit in their racist intra-family prejudice and measured their entire lives by how many light skinned or white women they could attain and how light brite their children could come out. It's everywhere and anyone who denies it is both a fool and a liar.

That is why I highly recommend THE BLACKER THE BERRY by Wallace Thurman. There is no truer portrait of the self-hatred among our people than the one extolled in this book, and what makes it even sadder is that this book was written in the 1920's. So that only shows how deep this kind of evil runs.

Lately, I have become very interested in this subject and I have searched for other books that explore this subject with intelligence, honest, beauty and wisdom and I have found several that I consider to be classics on the subject of Colorism.

(1) MARITA GOLDEN'S book "Don't Play In the Sun" is definitely the most modern up to date book of the bunch. It expertly weaves the story of her life experiences in the 1960's Black Power movement with the current struggles of women like Serena Williams and India Arie to find their way in the world, even in the midst of being shunned and ignored by the black community itself. The book's analysis of the Hollywood casting system and the "Mulatto Follies" of BET and MTV is priceless.

(2) "The Bluest Eye" by TONI MORRISON is by far the most riveting and painful book that I have read on this subject of colorism. I believe that her book, more than any mother, gets to the psychological and historical root cause of the problem and exposes the mode in which we pass the problem on generation to generation. The destruction of an innocent black girl named Pecola Breedlove will leave you heartbroken and shocked as you see the bold naked truth unfold right before your eyes. You can't ignore this book, because the story being told is the one that you are all too familiar with no matter what color you are.

(3) "Flesh and the Devil" by African novelist KOLA BOOF is another deeply powerful book that examines colorism, but not out in the open. This book is unique in that it focuses on a very enchanting love story between a Black Prince and Princess and follows their reincarnations through history as they struggle to find their way back to each other. Through detailed moments in black history, both in Africa and the United States, the provocative author highlights the way that black people originally viewed their beauty and humanity and then juxtuposes it against the way they see themselves now in the modern world. The result is nothing less than devastating. I love this book so much, because the storytelling is so rich and the depth is so sweeping and grand. Anyone who loves good writing and is proud to be descended from the Black race will find themselves literally changed forever by the powerful images depicted in this very poetically moving story.

(4) "The Color Complex"--VARIOUS AUTHORS, is a very simple, straight forward analysis from a sociological point of view. Much research and statistical facts are used to illustrate that our communities are infested with these issues.

(5) "The Darkest Child" by Dolores Philips is another great novel that shows us the poor blacks who live under the poverty line ingesting these complex social hierarchies based on color and how they not only expose their children to them, but force the entire community to live by the "color code". Everybody is used to it from slavery and the system goes on and on unchallenged. In this book, Tangy Mae, the darkest of 10 children by the white-looking mother Rozelle, struggles to find her dignity and confidence in the midst of her evil light skinned mother inflicting one horrid abuse on top of the other. One thing I will say for the evil white-looking mother, Rozelle, is that she treated all of her children hiddeously and with contempt, from the whitest to the blackest. But she killed the child who was born looking like Tangy Mae and that spoke volumnes. This book is a very real metaphor for what goes on. Very real.

The Blacker the Berry is a truly classic novel and one from a great time period - the Harlem Renaissance. Wallace Thurman weaves an unfamiliar tale of a African American woman who struggles with her skin color, the acceptance of family members and racism within the black community.

At the time "The Blacker the Berry" was written, it was the first novel of its kind to address issues widely known among the black community, but never discussed.

It's about a young woman, Emma Lou, who's darker skin tone brings anguish and breeds hatred not only for herself but from her lighter skinned relatives. Set in the 1920s, the main character travels from Boise, Idaho to Harlem, New York in hopes of escaping her problems back home. However, she only runs into deeper problems in a new city.

The "Blacker the Berry" shares with us her journey for self love and social equality. Every woman of any race or background can relate to this book in some manner. After reading the novel, I encouraged all of my friends to examine their own views on skin color and share them with others in hopes of breaking down barriers and unwanted stereotypes. It was a wonderful book and I enjoyed reading it because it was very descriptive about Harlem - my original home town.

I've read this book several times and as an African-American who has dealt with this issue as a teenager, let me say that Black readers must beware! If you are among those looking for escapism, "positive images," and bourgeois fantasies, then read Ebony magazine- this is NOT the book for you. If you are looking for RAW reality that may cause you some discomfort but will AT LEAST make you think about your subconscious beliefs and bring about some serious self-examination, then GO for it! This and Carter G. Woodson's "Miseducation of the Negro" should be in every black person's home!

black people can be as cruel to their own as the white man, if not worse...this novel does an excellent job of pointing out racism between blacks of different shades, african-americans against africans, and upperclass blacks against lowerclass blacks.... by making emma a snob, wallace made her a believeable character instead of a martyr...also check out the way he send up the leading figures of the harlem renaissance ( langston hughes, zora neale hurston ) he shows harlem for the magical black mecca it is, and he doesnt have to exaggerate on it...i couldn't find anything wrong with it.

Thruman's The Blacker The Berry was an outstanding piece of work. His vocabulary was exquisite. Emma Lou evoked sorry, shame, and anger in me all at once because I refused to accept her as the "underdog" and her constantly looking for the "right sort of people" to make her feel whole and accepted. I did feel empathy for her because she longed to be truly loved but did not recognize that the ultimate love comes from within and the sooner she accepted herself as a worthy human being she would forever be dissappointed in her relations with others. The book had a lot of passion and for a brief moment I thought Emma Lou was going to suffer a major depressive episode or commit suicide because she seemed so hopeless. The ending was unexpected and it left me wanting Emma Lou to say more.

I've just finished this engrossing novel and heartily recommend it. Thurman addresses intraracial prejudice-Black America's dirty little secret with eloquence and brutal honesty. Though life is not nearly as difficult for dark skinned women these days as it was for our poor beleagured anti-heroine Emma Lou, the specter of color preference remains within African-American culture. One has only to turn on the television our listen to popular so-called urban music to realize that for too many-lighter is still better. I applaud Thurman's courage to tackle such a tangible issue that has been largely forbidden from polite Black conversation. Like other readers, I would have enjoyed more dialogue, however I think the book's exposition helped elucidate the book's premise that though Emma Lou's problems stemmed from a combination of her upbringing, society and herself, the only way she could improve her life was to address that which she would alter-namely her perspective.

Wallace Thurman's story is brilliantly told and still relevant after over fifty years. I would have given it five stars, but I felt there was too little dialogue between Emma Lou and the other characters and too much narration. I do not like knowing what every character in the book thinks and feels by being told so, I like to figure it out on my own. Thus, the omnipotence of the author and reader and too little dialogue makes the book a four. Yet is still lyrical, Thurman has a beautiful vocabulary and expositional style.

Having grown up a dark-skinned male in the color-conscious city of Charleston SC (the book itself mentions this fact in passing) in the 1980s when Prince and El Debarge was what was happening for the ladies, I could truly relate to the tale of Emma Lou.

What I found particularly interesting in this saga of self-hate is how little it has changed since the best attemtps of Stokely Carmicheal and Malcolm X. One interesting scene in particular shows Emma Lou with a male friend at an Apollo Theater-type cabaret while the black comedians are making foul jokes about dark-skinned women while the pretty girls are idealized as light skinned. Emma Lou is rightly insulted. Compare this to modern comedians on Booty Entertainment television (BET) with gags like "Yo mama so black she spent all day in night school!" and the idealization of lighter women in videos.

The cruel remarks from adults that surround Emma Lou in her native Utah (also the home of author Wallace Thurman) can be heard today among ignorant parents toward the black children of various complexions today. Although in Emma Lou's case, one must also consider the age old feelings of mothers toward children who physically resemble and remind them of wayward fathers.

Sadly, things like this still go on and the book shows the tragedy of emotional cruelty toward children. Read it and watch how you talk to children in the future.

This Harlem Renaissance novel is a lost classic in African-American literature that must be reintroduced. My one and only complaint(and a slight one at that) is that sometimes the novel did not transition well between the two separate narrations of Emma Lou and Alva. This problem, however, is easily minisculed by the overall hard-hitting message of the book. At times I found myself getting infuriated by Emma Lou's seemingly silly and immature ways regarding color, but that is likely exactly what the author had set out to do--to make the reader realize the absurdity in being so color-conscious.
Though perhaps not as rampant as it was in the era that the novel is set, the whole light-complected/good hair complex is unfortunately an issue that still plagues the African- American community today. It is profound books such as this that will hopefully enlighten those practicing intra-racism that, light or dark, we are ALL considered 'black' by others, and that on a larger scale, regardless of anyone's race, we are ALL human. This is the realization that Emma Lou struggles with in the novel, and one that hopefully the reader will 'get'.