The Tears of the Black Man
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In The Tears of the Black Man, award-winning author Alain Mabanckou explores what it means to be black in the world today. Mabanckou confronts the long and entangled history of Africa, France, and the United States as it has been shaped by slavery, colonialism, and their legacy today. Without ignoring the injustices and prejudice still facing blacks, he distances himself from resentment and victimhood, arguing that focusing too intensely on the crimes of the past is limiting. Instead, it is time to ask: Now what? Embracing the challenges faced by ethnic minority communities today, The Tears of the Black Man looks to the future, choosing to believe that the history of Africa has yet to be written and seeking a path toward affirmation and reconciliation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this slender but intellectually dense collection of 12 essays, Franco-Congolese novelist Mabanckou (Black Moses) reveals and reshapes notions of black identity, arguing that in today's global community, "identity goes far beyond notions of territory or blood." In "The Identity Card," which echoes the title of a novel by Ivory Coast poet Jean-Marc Adiaffi, Mabanckou explores the role of place and displacement in the creative process: "Only when the place in which you find yourself is so completely different to your natural milieu' will childhood memories come surging to the surface," he observes. In "Bound to Violence," Mabanckou revisits the controversies spurred by Yambo Ouloguem's 1968 novel Le devoir de violence, which addressed the enslavement of Africans by Arabs and "African notables" before the arrival of the Europeans. Aspects of memoir figure into the essays here and there, such as in "A Negro in Paris," which recounts a conversation with a black fitness instructor in Paris about black people in America. Mabanckou's challenging perspective on African identity today is as enlightening as it is provocative.
