“Claude Brown’s Manchild in the Promised Land appeared at a pivotal political and cultural moment in the United States fifty years ago. 1965 saw the murder of Malcolm X, the eruption of the Watts uprising, a great escalation of direct U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the issuing of the Moynihan Report, the Selma to Montgomery Civil Rights marches, the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the founding of the Black Arts Repertory Theater and School in Harlem, to name only a relative few of the major events that year. While the term ‘Black Power’ would not be popularized until the following year, the Black Power and Black Arts movements were clearly in formation by 1965. It was this milieu of social turmoil and the continuing, though uncertain, transformation of the racial regime of the United States that made it possible for Brown’s book, a sort of bildungsroman of the streets, to sell millions of copies and receive, for the most part, glowing reviews in The New York Times, The New York Herald Tribune, and other leading venues for popular criticism of the time. To a large extent the popularity of the book was due to a desire by a largely (though certainly not entirely) white audience to understand the reality and psychology of young black people in the ghetto, a desire made urgent by the obvious anger and desire for more rapid social change on the part of African Americans embodied in the Watts rebellion in 1965 and in the rebellions of 1964 in New York, Jacksonville, and elsewhere. After all, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act and other Civil Rights legislation, what could explain the apparently increasing rage of the urban black masses? Interestingly enough, Manchild did not offer much direct help in this regard. Brown says repeatedly in the last chapters of the book that he does not really understand the Harlem of the present moment, that most of his former friends and accomplices are either dead or in jail, and that he has lost touch with such radicals as he knew. … In that way, Manchild is as much a conversion story or allegory of redemption in which the individual separates him- or herself from the community as it is a bildungsroman. Much as in James Baldwin’s Go Tell It on the Mountain (and James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, for that matter), there is the sense that the protagonist/author writes about the community in order to leave it, which, in turn, will give him the distance to write about it further. One might say that Manchild is the sort of narrative Baldwin might have written if the artist/writer protagonist had been John’s gang member brother Roy. …”
Manchild in the Promised Land at Fifty
W – Manchild in the Promised Land
[PDF] from Manchild in the Promised Land
amazon
Bill Davis
-
Join 348 other followers
Tags
- 1968 DNC
- Agent Orange
- Alan Watts
- Allen Ginsberg
- Angela Davis
- ARVN
- Berlin Wall
- Bill Ayers
- Bill Graham
- Black Power
- Bob Dylan
- Books
- Burroughs
- Cambodia
- Che
- Chicago Eight
- Chicano
- CIA
- Civil Rights Mov.
- Computing
- CORE
- Counterculture
- Cronkite
- Cuban Revolution
- Czech
- Dick Gregory
- Documentary
- Draft board
- Ed Sanders
- Eldridge Cleaver
- Environmental
- Feminist
- Freedom Summer
- Free Speech Mov.
- Gonzo journalism
- Grateful Dead
- Haight-Ashbury
- Hanoi
- Happenings
- Harlem
- Henry Kissinger
- Hippie
- Ho Chi Minh
- Ho Chi Minh Trail
- Huey P. Newton
- Hunter S. Thompson
- Italy
- Jack Kerouac
- James Baldwin
- Jazz
- Jerry Rubin
- Jesse Jackson
- John Kennedy
- Ken Kesey
- LA Boom
- Laos
- LSD
- Lyn. Johnson
- Malcolm X
- Marijuana
- Merry Pranksters
- Mexico
- Michael Herr
- MLKJr.
- Movie
- Music
- My Lai
- Napalm
- Newspaper
- Nixon
- Noam Chomsky
- No Nukes
- NVA
- Pacifist
- Paris
- Philip Berrigan
- Phil Ochs
- Poetry
- Poverty
- Project Mercury
- R. McNamara
- Race Riots
- Religion
- Rob. Kennedy
- Rolling Stones
- Saigon
- SCLC
- SDS
- SNCC
- Sports
- Street theater
- Tet 1968
- The Beatles
- The Fugs
- Timothy Leary
- Tom Hayden
- TV
- Viet Cong
- Vietnam War
- Weather Underground
-
Recent Posts
- The Death of Che Guevara Declassified
- New York Tendaberry – Laura Nyro (1969)
- The Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara (1974)
- Travesties – Tom Stoppard (1974)
- It’s Not Just Trump — LBJ Took Classified Documents Too
- Mary Gabriel – Ninth Street Women: : Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler (2018)
- Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution
- Voting Rights Act of 1965
- City Lights – Amy Taubin on “New York, 1962–1964: Underground and Experimental Cinema”
- Music From The ONCE Festival (1961–1966)
Categories
- 1968 DNC
- Agent Orange
- Alan Watts
- Allen Ginsberg
- Angela Davis
- ARVN
- Beach Boys
- Berlin Wall
- Bill Ayers
- Bill Graham
- Bill Moyers
- Black Power
- Bob Dylan
- Bobby Seale
- Books
- Burroughs
- Cambodia
- Che
- Chicago Eight
- Chicano
- CIA
- Civil Rights Mov.
- Computing
- CORE
- Counterculture
- Cronkite
- Cuban Revolution
- Czech
- Dick Gregory
- Documentary
- Draft board
- Ed Sanders
- Eldridge Cleaver
- Environmental
- Feminist
- Free Speech Mov.
- Freedom Summer
- Gonzo journalism
- Grateful Dead
- Haight-Ashbury
- Hanoi
- Happenings
- Harlem
- Henry Kissinger
- Hippie
- Ho Chi Minh
- Ho Chi Minh Trail
- Huey P. Newton
- Hunter S. Thompson
- Italy
- Jack Kerouac
- James Baldwin
- Jazz
- Jerry Rubin
- Jesse Jackson
- John Kennedy
- Ken Kesey
- LA Boom
- Laos
- LSD
- Lyn. Johnson
- Malcolm X
- Mao
- Marijuana
- Merry Pranksters
- Mexico
- Michael Herr
- MLKJr.
- Movie
- Music
- My Lai
- Napalm
- Newspaper
- Nixon
- No Nukes
- Noam Chomsky
- NVA
- Pacifist
- Paris
- Paris Peace Accords
- Paul Goodman
- Peace talks
- Phil Ochs
- Philip Berrigan
- Poetry
- Poverty
- Project Mercury
- R. McNamara
- Race Riots
- Religion
- Richard Brautigan
- Rob. Kennedy
- Rolling Stones
- Saigon
- SCLC
- SDS
- SNCC
- Sports
- Street theater
- Tet 1968
- The Beatles
- The Fugs
- Timothy Leary
- Tom Hayden
- TV
- United Nations
- Ursula K. Le Guin
- Viet Cong
- Vietnam War
- Watergate scandal
- Weather Underground
Archives
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- Follow 1960s: Days of Rage on WordPress.com
Categories
Allen Ginsberg Black Power Bob Dylan Books Burroughs CIA Civil Rights Mov. Counterculture Cuban Revolution Documentary Draft board Feminist Happenings Henry Kissinger Hippie Jazz John Kennedy LSD Lyn. Johnson Marijuana MLKJr. Movie Music Newspaper Nixon Pacifist Paris Poetry R. McNamara Religion Rob. Kennedy SDS Street theater Viet Cong Vietnam WarGravatar
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
LikeLike