Strange New Land by Peter H. Wood

Peter Wood is a recently retired professor from Duke University. I met him at the beginning of this year. He was nice and surprisingly easy to talk to. I told him a little bit about 50 Books Project (in blatant disregard for the first rule of 50 Books Project). The next day he gave me a copy of this book as well as a copy of his newest book.

Wood makes some intriguing assertions about colonial America. Here are a few of them:
- Blacks were significantly present in the Americas mere years after Columbus's expedition.
- Originally slavery in America was not based on race.
- Specific state laws were passed in order to make race the controlling factor in slavery.

My favorite chapter was 'Building a Culture', in which Wood shows the ways that blacks, although oppressed, created a unique culture of their own, which had a dramatic impact on overall American society. Some of the vulgate languages that developed in these slave cultures made a lasting mark on American English. Wood also details the effects that blacks had on music and religion (namely Protestant Christianity) during the colonial period of our nation's history. I thought this sentence was amusing, "Europeans, startled by the extent of African drumming and fearful that this skill sometimes provided a secret means of communication, outlawed the use of drums by slaves in various colonies."

It is difficult to write interesting works of history. Often works such as this are informative, but require slogging through less than stellar writing to get the information. Wood's book does not suffer from this all too common problem. Wood has a way of teasing out interesting stories in the history that he writes, and he has a good writing style. For being an academic work of history, this book was fairly easy to read.

All Aunt Hagar's Children by Edward P. Jones

Edward P. Jones won the Pulitzer Prize for his previous work, The Known World, which I believe was his first novel. Prior to that he had written Lost in the City, a collection of short stories, as is All Aunt Hagar’s Children.

Jones uses a wide variety of writing styles throughout this book. ‘Spanish in the Morning’ is told from the perspective of a kindergartner who skips a grade in Catholic school. ‘All Aunt Hagar’s Children’ is a brilliantly written piece of detective fiction, similar to that of Walter Mosley’s. The main character and narrator of the story, is convinced by his elderly mother and her group of friends to look into the death of the son of one of the women. It was ruled a drug overdose by the police, but there was plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.

‘Root Worker’ was one of my favorite stories, in which a medical doctor comes to terms with her mother being healed by a root worker (at that time, thought to be nearly synonymous with a witch doctor). ‘Blindsided’ was an interesting story about a young woman who unexpectedly lost her sight while riding a bus to a Sam Cooke concert. By far my favorite story was ‘The Devil Swims Across the Anacostia River’, which was about a woman who met the Devil (sans horns and pitchfork) in a grocery store.

I like reading collections of short stories for a number of reasons. And there is something unique about the stories in Hagar. Although few of them are longer than 40 pages, they read like full-length novels. Jones is so adept at developing his characters that it hardly feels like reading short stories. Two things are central to all of these stories: the African American experience and Washington, D.C. Ranging throughout the 20th Century, each of the stories either takes place in D.C., or involves the area in some way.

Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane

Kaffir is a derogatory term in South Africa roughly equivalent to... you know. I mean you know, lots of black rappers use it in songs to refer somewhat affectionately to other black people. Shit, here. But that's how Mark Mathabane grew up, as a "Kaffir" Johannesburg's biggest slum, Alexandra. His childhood, clothed in rags and terrorized by constant police raids, sounds more like something out of Elie Wiesel's memoirs than Harriet Tubman's. Maybe I can't make a comparison like that, but either way Apartheid was more appalling than I thought.

Obviously he makes it out. I don't think I'm giving away anything there. If you couldn't figure that out, this book might be a little advanced for you. But the way he gets out was surprising. His self taught English helped, but that wasn't the reason he made it, nor his perfect school record. It was Aurthur Ashe's footsteps that led him to America.

The ending is abrupt and somewhat unsatisfying, but Mathabane's story of growing up flushes out the racial tensions that make the book worth reading. He shows how white Afrikaners feared the natives, how blacks from the city were different than those in the tribal reserves, why some blacks hated other blacks, and pretty much every other dynamic you can think of. If you know nothing about black South Africa this is a perfect starting point.

Brownsville, Brooklyn by Wendell Pritchett

I had never heard of Brownsville prior to reading this book. It is a neighborhood in Brooklyn, probably most famous for producing people such as, Danny Kaye, Aaron Copeland, and Mike Tyson. Now I know what you're thinking, Hey Danny Kaye is a talented guy; I like the music in those beef commercials; and I find most everything Mike Tyson does amusing. However, while the author Wendell Pritchett mentions these famous Brownsville natives, it is only in passing. The book is essentially a community study, beginning with the creation of Brownsville in the late 19th century, and taking the reader up to the present (well 2002 anyway).

Pritchett's intention is to show that a myriad of factors caused the community to decline throughout the 20th century. He spends much of the book describing different social and political institutions, both inside and outside of Brownsville, that affected the community. Pritchett introduces group after group, and before long each page become awash with acronyms that are almost impossible to keep straight. There are large sections of the book in which Pritchett focuses on a specific group that no doubt was important to the community, but not as integral as he makes them seem.

After 270 pages describing the failure, or at best the inability of community groups and institutions, Pritchett chalks most of Brownsville's problems up to racial discrimination. While I think he is essentially correct, this conclusion does not fit the rest of the book. Pritchett describes all types of problems plaguing Brownsville throughout the 20th century, and then in his conclusion racism appears like a deus ex machina.

Brownsville was (and is) a unique community. One would be hard pressed to make comparisons between it and other communities; and for this reason it warrants some attention. But unless you really want to learn about Brownsville, Brooklyn, do not read this book. Much of it can only be described as tedious.