Saving the Race
Conversations on Du Bois from a Collective Memoir of Souls
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk is one of the most influential books ever published in this country. In it, Du Bois wrote that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” a prophecy that is as fresh and poignant today as when it first appeared in print in 1903. Now, one hundred years after The Souls of Black Folk was first published, Saving the Race reexamines the legacy of Du Bois and his “color line” prophecy from a modern viewpoint. The author, Rebecca Carroll, a biracial woman who was reared by white parents, not only provides her own personal perspective, but she invites eighteen well-known African Americans to share their ideas and opinions about what Du Bois's classic text means today.
Lalita Tademy, author
Stanley Crouch, cultural critic, novelist
A’Lelia Bundles, great-great-granddaughter of Madame C.J. Walker, author
David Graham Du Bois, stepson of W.E.B. Du Bois, writer, teacher, activist
Touré, novelist, contributing writer for Rolling Stone magazine
Julian Bond, chairman of the board, NAACP
Thelma Golden, chief curator and deputy director for exhibitions and programs at the Studio Museum of Harlem
Kathleen Cleaver, former communications secretary of the Black Panther party
Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., civil rights leader and lawyer
Cory Booker, former New Jersey councilman, mayoral candidate, activist
Jewell Jackson McCabe, founder and president of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women
Derrick Bell, professor of law, New York University
Elizabeth Alexander, poet and writer
Clarence Major, author, poet, artist
Terence Blanchard, horn player, film composer
Reverend Dr. James Forbes, senior minister of Riverside Church, New York
Patricia Smith, poet
LeAlan Jones, author
The result is an insightful and illuminating collection of interviews both provocative and inspiring. Saving the Race paints a fascinating, complicated, and colorful portrait about the “souls of black folk” in twenty-first century America.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his landmark book on race, The Souls of Black Folks, W.E.B. DuBois detailed the schizophrenic lifestyle black Americans had to live in order to find their place in post-slavery America. Carroll's latest work since the well-received Sugar In The Raw: Voices of Young Black Girls in America revisits DuBois's classic more than 100 years after its debut to examine the current relevance of its original content. Carroll interviewed 18 well-known black scholars, journalists, artists, politicians and activists for her project, asking them to reflect on selected DuBois passages and to offer new interpretations of them. The result is a handbook of personal reflections and cultural insights from the likes of Derrick Bell, Patricia Smith, Julian Bond and Elizabeth Alexander on the issues of black authenticity, inequality, fitting in, being the"different" black person and on DuBois himself. Personal anecdotes at the beginning of each chapter give readers a front-row view of Carroll's own struggles as a biracial woman trying desperately to discover how to be black--with only white parents, a few black friends and a large dose of race consciousness as her guides. All together, the short-chapter format weaves together the personal history and the variant commentary nicely, but somehow the book remains disjointed and unfocused, perhaps because it never focuses on a central theme.
