Customer Reviews

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Henry Louis Gates must have some magical ability to transcribe someone's personality onto the printed page. I was amazed at the variety of personalities Gates wrote about and how accurately Gates seemed to portray them. My favorites were Anatole Broyard and Colin Powell, but every essay is compelling. Perhaps what I enjoyed most is that Gates had the bravery to write about controversial subjects (like Louis Farrakhan and O.J. Simpson, though an entire essay was not dedicated to the latter). I recommend this book highly. Fans of this book would also enjoy Cornel West's Race Matters.

One of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s stated goals is to expose the constant hovering shadow of racial identity that, unbidden and unspoken, lives beside us. In that venture he succeeds and, I suspect, most poignantly for Negroes. Yet as illuminating and cathartic as this book might be for the black psyche, it may be more so its white counterpart.

Daily news and live encounters too often remind us, or me anyway, of the unsavory and resistant pathologies that blight our black communities, so that the actual potential of an entire people can seem in doubt. (Is it too much to ask that reality matches our desperately hopeful cant?) But Gates's talent alone refutes this notion; his prose flows so smoothly and cuts so deftly that I'd do the shopping and pay the bill, just to read his grocery list. And if Gates alone doesn't accomplish that, then the seven complex lives he splays on his pages certainly do.

This happens not because of some strained attempt to rehabilitate an image. Rather, because he examines his subjects like the diamonds that they are, and unflinchingly rotates them to reveal both superb facets and fatal flaws wherever they arise. In doing so, any nagging questions of ability seem ridiculous, leaving cultural impediments as the villain in a national tragedy. Black excellence is the ultimate rejoinder.

I grabbed this collection in a rush at the bookstore, and only later did I realize that I had read two of the chapters in The New Yorker. Most (all?) of them were first published there. Still, I don't regret it.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. masterfully profiles eight black men in this collection of his New Yorker essays. He writes in a bluesy, artistic style and has the ability to get quotes from these men that any other journalist would fail to do. The men intimately discuss the tragedies and successes of their lives. The stories of these men details their ascent and depicts the world around them. Gates daringly portrays O.J. Simpson and the infamous trial and Louis Farrakhan, the outspoken leader of the nation of Islam. The other men profiled are James Baldwin, Albert Murray, Bill T. Jones, Colin Powell, Harry Belafonte, and Anatole Broyard. Each of their lives have distinct differences, but it is also interesting to find the areas where they overlap.

The portraits of Powell and Farrakhan stand out the most to me as Gates sheds light on the stories behind the men that we rarely see. I recommend this book for its intriguing stories, dynamic language, and true concepts of what it means to be a black man in America.

Excellent book that everyone should read, and just as fresh today as when it was written. Gates is a fabulous and engaging writer, his subjects, love them or hate them, are infinitely fascinating. I didn't want it to end and would love another version.

This book will challenge you to look at men who have been instumental politically and educationally in America. You may not close the book liking them all and probably won't agree with everything they said or did, but you will go away with more knowledge and understanding of their positions.

I believe that Mr. Gate's objective is to show that there is no cookie cutter that determines the personality of a Black man in the 1990's and 2000's. He has accomplished that. Read this right after Troopergate, to find out who this Louis Gates guy is. The book was a reader's digest sketch of various Blacks that apparently Mr. Gates had interviewed during his career. Very surface biography. Maybe that's what people want. Too cursory for me personally.

Gates is a master of his craft; his writing is original, insightful and is of the whole cloth-- weaving visual images with literary allusions and references to the person that render all of what we might rightly know of a visible self. The portraits are intellectually rich and intellectually satisfying. His rendition of the crack in Jesse Jackson's reaction to Colin Powell-- which only comes out in private, is absolutely magical and priceless for the emotional nuance it conveys (in a loving and hilarious style). Like an exquisite and rare gourmet meal for the mind, one wants these profiles never to end for the knowledge and reality that they impart.

I really enjoyed this book. Gates is a great writer and has a great ability to capture personalities on paper. I recommend this for anyone who thinks there is one type of black man.

For this colored individual who at age 50 is still laboring tountangle his identity, Gates' book was a breezy plateau for reflectionon a long hot, steep climb. The broad spectrum of personalities which Gates chooses to describe, the thoughtful, balanced probity with which he approaches them and - best of all - the wit and world-accepting irony of his writing style often brought me to tears and laughter at the same time. Any afro male trying to see himself clearly, and who frequently feels himself "drowning in a sea of jive", to quote Jon Hendricks, may find in Gates' book the first windings of some sort of lifeline.

Finally, a book that does not hammer square pegs into round holes. Gates presents fair and balanced portraits of black life, going into the artistry of Bill Jones and Harry Belafonte, the ground breaking work of Albert Murray, and a section on Louis Farrakhan that begs for futher probing. This book serves to remind all that black men and women can use all their gifts, and not ones that put balls through hoops