A Rap on Race

A Rap on Race is a 1971 non-fiction book co-authored by writer and social critic James Baldwin and anthropologist Margaret Mead. It consists of transcripts of conversations between the two.

A Rap on Race
First edition
AuthorJames Baldwin, Margaret Mead
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
PublisherJ. B. Lippincott
Publication date
1971
Media typePrint

Summary

The transcript mentions "New Guinea, South Africa, Women's Lib, the South, slavery, Christianity, their early childhood upbringings, Israel, the Arabs, the bomb, Paris, Istanbul, the English language, Huey Newton, John Wayne, the black bourgeoisie, Baldwin's 2-year-old grand nephew and Professor Mead's daughter."[1]

Literary significance and criticism

The book was dismissed as "the same old bilge you've heard from the fellow on the next stool to you in the saloon " by a reviewer at The New York Times when it was first published.[1] More recently, writer Maria Popova called the book "a remarkable and prescient piece of the cultural record" and "a bittersweet testament to one of the recurring themes in their dialogue — our tendency to sideline the past as impertinent to the present, only to rediscover how central it is in understanding the driving forces of our world and harnessing them toward a better future." [2]

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.