Introduction The Souls of Black Men The Body and Soul of Modernism Tuning the American Soul Body Lines and Color Lines Playin' the Changes Lethal Weapons and City Games Notes Acknowledgments Index
Race Men is a poignant, courageous book. It exposes what we too frequently take for granted: the manner in which oppressive masculinities permeate black politics and culture, closing off other ways of thinking, seeing, feeling, and creating. Hazel Carby takes us backstage, so to speak, and reveals how performances of manhood can silence other voices, reproduce patriarchy, and yet occasionally offer a glimmer of what could happen if we overturned the prison house of masculinity. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America I've been wondering when some likely black feminist was going to challenge, in particular, the male-centeredness of the 'scholarship' of this recent coterie of black public intellectuals. I need to wonder no longer for in Race Men, Hazel Carby has ably begun the campaign in this meticulously argued treatise on the usually unquestioned symbiosis of masculinity and 'race' at the core of most debates in Africana Studies. May this propitious opening salvo become a flood of salubrious discourse. -- Michele Wallace, author of Black Macho and the Myth of the Superwoman Hazel Carby throws down the glove of gender before the wonted 'Race Man.' Her investigation of masculinity, race, and nation speaks volumes and names names--from W. E. B. Du Bois to Cornel West. Thank you, Hazel Carby! -- Nell Irvin Painter, author of Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol
Hazel V. Carby is Chair of African and African American Studies and Professor of American Studies at Yale University. She is the author of Reconstructing Womanhood: The Emergence of the Afro-American Woman Novelist and Cultures in Babylon.
[A] provocative...look at depictions of black masculinity in
novels, jazz, film and photography. -- Jonathan Rieder * New York
Times *
While a number of African American women in the race movement have
accused their male counterparts of sexism in recent years, few have
done so as authoritatively as Hazel Carby in this groundbreaking
book. Critiquing the role of masculinity in the work of such
progressive historical figures as W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson,
Miles Davis, Leadbelly, and the biographer C.L.R. James, Carby
constructs a semiological and historical context for understanding
both the inherent 'male centeredness' of black race leaders in the
20th century and the ways in which such repressive methods of
thinking and acting continue to undermine the cause of black
liberation...Rather than writing a polemical tract about the
present, Carby uses history to make an implicit critique of
contemporary African American affairs...Carby's book is a
pioneering model of...empathy and intellectual largesse. Race
Men reads as a blueprint for a new and more potent identity
based politics--a bold warning about the perils of delimiting our
sense of who we are. -- Maurice Berger * Village Voice *
Carby's voice is clear, well documented, courageous and
loud...Carby consistently challenges her reader to look at
race and masculinity in ways that are new, difficult and often
dangerous to our notions of self and of others....[She] adds a
much-needed and very welcome new dimension to our perceptions not
only of Du Bois, Robeson, James, Davis and others she specifically
names, but of our notions of race and maleness in all their
aspects...Race Men is a welcome call to intellectual arms in
the battle not only for visibility and voice for women of African
descent, but analysis of and liberation from oppressive notions of
race and masculinity for women and men, whether they recognize them
as such or not. -- Jill Nelson * Women's Review of Books *
Race Men is a hard-hitting polemic...[and] each chapter
stands alone as a tightly wound argument. -- Willoughby Mariano *
New Haven Advocate *
Hazel V. Carby...offers a revealing look at the images of black
manhood and masculinity in America...The strength of Race
Men lies in Carby's absorbing observations of various
dimensions of black masculinity manifested through such genres as
music, literature, film and photography. -- Charles A. Brooks *
Black Issues Book Review *
Carby...is best known for her landmark 1987 study of
African-American women novelists, Reconstructing Womanhood.
In Race Men, she turns her attention to men without dulling
her commitment to feminism. This is a sympathetic book; Carby
writes about these important men with insight and admiration.
Throughout, she explores the difficulties each faced in defining
himself within our racist society. Again and again she shows that
the process of becoming a man has meant excluding women...This
accumulation of examples from the mainstream arenas of sports,
music, and movies supports Carby's double point: becoming a black
man remains a fraught process and those who have done it
successfully have not yet figured out how to imagine or include
positive and powerful women. -- Anne E. Fernald * Boston Book
Review *
In her new book Race Men, Carby questions the black male
archetypes of the century--and casts the historic figures she deals
with in a new light...Carby can be both a subtle and yet strongly
ideological writer, who can use feminist theory to bring out new
dimensions of even such all-male enclaves as the world of B-bop
music...Race Men is a rare book, which looks at several
different subjects--from jazz to black political philosophy, from
action films to the blues--from a refreshingly radical perspective
and brings real insight to the study of black masculinity. Carby's
work transcends cultural studies in this case to become an eloquent
survey into how role-playing and expectations construct everything
else--race, gender, sexuality--and how those in turn affect modern
culture and modern life. -- Farhan Haq * Asian Age *
Carby takes issue with the theories espoused by W. E. B. Du Bois in
his seminal work The Soul of the Black Folk. Tracing the
development of black scholarship forward, she levels criticism at
current black thinkers such as Cornel West whom she feels lay claim
to, benefit from, and thus propagate the narrow boundaries of black
scholarship delineated by Du Bois, which defines the black public
intellectual in ways that exclude women...[Carby is] eloquently
persuasive about the dangers inherent in having fewer voices,
especially those of women, speaking for the race as a whole. She
argues that Du Bois, as the self-proclaimed father of future
generations of black intellectuals, leaves little room for
departure from his rigid set of guidelines. Indeed, throughout her
book, Carby insists that the intellectual and artistic leadership
of black America should not fall solely to the race men. -- Zebulon
V. Miletsky * New England Quarterly *
In six compelling essays, Carby...deconstructs representations of
black masculinity and racial leadership in a variety of cultural
settings, during critical periods of the 20th century...Carby is
gifted at finding new ways of reading American cultural products in
relation to race and gender in America. Highly recommended for
African-American studies, American studies, and gender/women's
studies collections. -- Sherri Barnes * Library Journal *
Race Men is a poignant, courageous book. It exposes what we
too frequently take for granted: the manner in which oppressive
masculinities permeate black politics and culture, closing off
other ways of thinking, seeing, feeling, and creating. Hazel Carby
takes us backstage, so to speak, and reveals how performances of
manhood can silence other voices, reproduce patriarchy, and yet
occasionally offer a glimmer of what could happen if we overturned
the prison house of masculinity. -- Robin D. G. Kelley, author of
Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban
America
I've been wondering when some likely black feminist was going to
challenge, in particular, the male-centeredness of the
'scholarship' of this recent coterie of black public intellectuals.
I need to wonder no longer for in Race Men, Hazel Carby has
ably begun the campaign in this meticulously argued treatise on the
usually unquestioned symbiosis of masculinity and 'race' at the
core of most debates in Africana Studies. May this propitious
opening salvo become a flood of salubrious discourse. -- Michele
Wallace, author of Black Macho and the Myth of the
Superwoman
Hazel Carby throws down the glove of gender before the wonted 'Race
Man.' Her investigation of masculinity, race, and nation speaks
volumes and names names--from W. E. B. Du Bois to Cornel West.
Thank you, Hazel Carby! -- Nell Irvin Painter, author of
Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol
Hazel Carby has been at the cutting edge of African American
studies ever since her landmark 1980 essay on early black woman
writers and the blues helped many dyed-in-the-wool literary critics
see the importance of the vernacular in black culture. Race
Men, her intelligent and timely study of black public figures
from W. E. B. Du Bois to Danny Glover, is often rightly acerbic
especially when describing the machismo underpinning the work of
Miles Davis, the disturbing racial implications of the Lethal
Weapon series, or the stuffed-shirted public position of Cornel
West (literally as he prescribes a dress code for black
intellectuals)...Race Men reveals many insights in its
groundbreaking investigation of the usually unspoken symbiosis of
race and masculinity, but it is only the opening salvo in a
discussion which will run and run. -- Alan Rice * New Formations
*
Carby gives us a sharp and poignant insight into the black human
condition...[She] is as vehement in her denunciation of black male
chauvinism as she is of white racism. * India Weekly *
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