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摘要
摘要
Black and white culture has been blending and colliding in America for hundreds of years. In the 1700s, black slaves discovered their masters' Bibles and found in them a seditious faith of their own. In the 1920s, young white men fell in love with New Orleans jazz and created an underground of cultural dissidents. In the 1970s, black style began its takeover of the sports world and made Dr. J and Michael Jordan the idols of millions. In Mulatto America, a dazzling work of cultural history, the stories of these daring and deeply influential encounters are described in vibrant detail. Beginning with new and shocking revelations about the white slaves kidnapped into "the House of Bondage," Mulatto America vividly chronicles the hidden connections that have shaped American style and character. Stephan Talty proposes that, along with the hatred that ruled the relationship between blacks and whites for so long, there has been a largely unexamined flip side: a powerful attraction that led both races to mimic what they saw and desired in each other. The pages of this groundbreaking work, which introduces a strong new voice, are populated by the renegades who crossed the color line out of deep conviction or wild curiosity: W. E. B. Du Bois, Dorothy Dandridge, Elvis, Jay-Z, and many others. Each chapter examines a different vanguard: The interracial lovers of the slavery era who ignored theories of racial inferiority and gave us models of devotion and daring. The black elite early in the last century who found in Shakespeare and Michelangelo not only deeply humanist masterpieces but hope that white bigotry could be overcome. And the members of today's hip-hop generation, who revel in the cultural freedom earned at so high a cost. Drawing on original research and daring new interpretations of crucial events in American history, Talty paints a portrait of a lost America: one in which musicians, writers, and ordinary people led the nation to a deeper understanding of the strangers on the other side of town. Without the mixing of black and white culture, America would look, sound, and feel completely different than it does today. On a cultural level, as well as racially, we are indeed a mulatto nation. This provocative and highly engaging new history shows us how this came to pass.
评论 (4)
出版社周刊评论
Miscegenation, both cultural and biological, brings forth new ideas and undermines narrow conceptions, argues Talty, a noted culture writer for the New York Times Magazine, Spin and Vibe. Describing his project not as traditional academic history but as "literary journalism," Talty draws on a hodgepodge of subjects that he admits cannot serve as a comprehensive survey. His chronology hops from the days when black slaves and white indentured servants mixed to the emergence of a European-minded black intellectual class at the turn of the 20th century and the use of hip-hop as one of the last strongholds of ghetto authenticity. Some of Talty's prose in the earlier chapters, which deal primarily with prevailing notions of blackness in the pre-Civil War era, lacks the forceful, imaginative analysis of later chapters, which showcase the pop-culture byproducts of race mixing. The careers of the first "Black" celebrities, such as Paul Robeson and Dorothy Dandridge, are regarded as complex instances of signification that invigorated the public at large while destroying some of their messengers. Talty's background as a critic is also reflected in his eloquent take on jazz: "It acted as an undertow pulling fans and musicians toward a realization of a complex black humanity, while only barely rippling the surface of 1920s and 1930s race relations." Few of Talty's ideas are revolutionary, but this book is an informed, occasionally inspired work that pulls its historical examples under a broad view of biracialism-as a phenomenon of memes as well as genes. It's a concept that more than sustains this smart, popularizing account. (Jan. 19) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Talty, a self-defined literary journalist, ponders the American realities of race where the intersection of whites and blacks reveals the essence of the American character. Talty demonstrates this intersection is filled with great creative and destructive tensions, producing energies not always acknowledged in the broader culture. He initially focuses on the ambiguities of race relations in the era of slavery, those points where human recognition across clearly delineated racial barriers seeps through. In later chapters, Talty offers cultural critiques; for example, the role that jazz has played in establishing a common American expression. Talty assesses the crossover impact of soul singer Sam Cooke in the 1960s and then analyzes the controversial black pimp/street life obsession developed by whites in the 1970s as reflected in the music and dress of the disco scene. This is a must-read for readers interested in race and cultural issues. --Vernon Ford
Kirkus评论
Freelance journalist Talty examines encounters between white and black America that created what he labels a "mulatto culture." The author begins with pre-Civil War accounts of whites who were kidnapped or sold by their families into slavery. Using both court records and memoirs, he defines this tiny population (perhaps 30 abductions a year), noting that children were the preferred targets because adults had voting records and memories to prove their whiteness. Once the children were regarded as "black," Talty shows, their appearance and memories were entirely discounted. One slave trader confessed on his deathbed that, "in August 1774, he had purchased an entire boatload of Irish natives and sold them in the South, advertising them as light-skinned blacks," because in that category they would bring a higher profit than as indentured servants. These slaves had to prove they were Caucasian in "trials of whiteness." At about the same time, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was offering near-white children in anti-slave auctions held to raise ransom money to free the youngsters. White audiences responded to these demonstrations very favorably, although at actual sales in the South, lighter-skinned captives "could disrupt slave auctions and unnerve an entire town." From here, the text moves on to the antebellum South and examines the effect of fundamentalist Christianity on blacks, looking specifically at conversion narratives, observing that it was traditional for black converts to describe themselves as becoming "white" upon entering heaven. An essay on interracial relationships rediscovers wonderful stories of whites drinking their paramours' blood in order to circumvent the "one-drop" rule; another piece discusses W.E.B. Du Bois's role in creating a movement that led whites (for possibly the first time) to envy black culture. In these opening chapters, Talty does a splendid job of unraveling fact, fiction, and legend. The remaining six pieces, which focus on such cultural movements as jazz, hip-hop, and disco, are slightly less engaging. An interesting, if uneven, blend of literary journalism.
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Journalist Talty guides us through a history of mulatto culture (both the mixing of races and mixed-race individuals) from the mid-1700s to the present, admirably covering a huge amount of social and historical information to arrive at the present-day integration of white and black culture. Mixed-race individuals pioneered the overall integration of black and white races: "Black firsts" such as Dorothy Dandridge and Paul Robeson garnered respect from whites and were viewed as wonders of their race or "honorary whites," while later, stars such as Sam Cooke and Muhammad Ali crossed the color line on their own terms. The development of jazz saw whites emulating black musicians to the point of breaking the black cultural code, while the black movement of the Sixties embraced black power as "whites learned how it felt to be the object of racial hatred." Talty suggests that now blacks and whites have choices, allowing the personal finally to trump the social and historical. His conclusion is reminiscent of Shelby Steele's in The Content of Our Character: A New Vision of Race in America. An intellectual discourse on popular culture, more literary than academic, this volume is recommended to public and academic libraries.-Paula N. Arnold, M.L.S., Brighton, MA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.