KWANZAA 2016/UMOJA NOTES
Based on his reading of John Edgar Wideman's Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File
(New York: Scribner, 2016), the philosophical novelist Charles Johnson might
choose one day to enlighten us about race and being and some infernal functions
of narrative. He might choose to expand
ideas he presented in "The End of
the Black American Narrative" (The
American Scholar, Summer 2008, 32-42).
There he suggested that "the old black American narrative has
outlived its usefulness as a tool of interpretation" and that in the 21st
century we need "new and better stories…with the understanding that each
is, at best, a provisional reading of reality" (42). The identities of "we" and
"need" are still mysterious in 2016; they dance with other sub-atomic
particles. We who need epistemological
comfort recognize the old white American narrative is a fragile, rusty
tool. It has utility neither in a Donald
Trump world nor in a Bob Dylan one. The
vexed, bogus, ancient primal colors of race ---brown, yellow, white, red ---
need attention the splinters of narrative emotion on Twitter are incapable of
providing. Johnson is philosophically
honest. He warrants our philosophical
trust.
Stories are true lies; lies, true stories. It is universally acknowledged that actuality
demands the publication of reality lies for its completion. Wideman is an accomplished writer of fictions
as well as the factions appropriate for confessional autobiography. Just reread his novels The Lynchers, Reuben, The
Cattle Killing, Philadelphia Fire, and Fanon and his nonfictional anatomies
of the heart Brothers and Keepers: A Memoir and Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and
Sons, Race and Society. Should these
works fail to evoke your sympathy, know that you are as post-human as Trump and
his fascist soulmates. So be it. Don't worry.
Be happy.
In a Christmas Eve letter to a former student, I
recommended that he read Writing to Save
a Life. He wrote in a letter, dated Dec. 18, 2016:
I did read the two books you reviewed last year,
"The Education of Kevin Powell" and "Between the World and
Me." I found the Powell book to be well worth the read, but was
disappointed in the Coates work after all the favorable comments in the
mainstream media. I found that neither
rose to the level of "Black Boy," the complete version which I read
earlier this year, and a reminder of my esteem for Wright. There are so much variety in the lives and
histories of black folk in this country, and yet it seems race as a chief
character is usually present, having an influence that is unmistakable. Is that
how we are most defined even today, by our skin color?
………
Race certainly seems to be the central force in the books
by Powell and Coates. I am not sure
whether I should simply accept that as reality, should regret that two
contemporary black writers have that as their reality even today, or should consider that this race
thing is taken too seriously by some black folk.
I recommended the Wideman book, so that his trepidation
might be confirmed. My former student and I have not transcended Richard Wright
or, as native Mississippians, the
legacies of Louis Till and his son Emmett, or as American citizens the
Medusa-headed phenomenon that is taken too seriously by some provisionally white, brown, yellow, and red
folk who have no mirrors for their faces. Writing
to Save a Life is an aesthetic
model of literature that all of us need and deserve.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr. December 26, 2016
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