A Collection of Book Reviews Dealing with Racism

A Collection of Book Reviews Dealing with Racism

Achebe, Chinua. 1992. Things Fall Apart. New Jersey: Everyman's Library.

This is a gripping novel about the problem of European colonialism in Africa. The story relates the cultural collision that occurs when Christian English missionaries arrive among the Ibos of Nigeria, bringing along their European ways of life and religion.

Angelou, Maya. 1986. All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes. New York: Random House.

This book provides a first-hand opinions and feelings of black Americans who, living through the racial crisis of the 1960's, came to Africa in search of their historical, spiritual and psychological home. Readers will appreciate the means in which Maya Angelou relates her conflicts with some Ghanaians; her romance with African Muslim; her trip to Germany, where she joins an American acting troupe and confronts her own prejudices; and her struggle to accept her son's manly independence. The light Maya sheds on emerging Africa and the American black community, makes for absorbing readings.

Ball, Edward. 1998. Slaves in the Family. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc..

This is a nonfiction story of a man's journey into his family's past as slave owning people. He's goal was to find the descendants of the slaves who lived on his family's plantation. Ball chronicles the lives of people who lived on his ancestors' lands. In his research Bell discovered that there was a highly successful slave trader company owned by his family as well. His family kept excellent records and through these records he was able to trace the offspring of slave women and Ball men, which resulted to between 75,000 and 100,000 people currently living, and loca...

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...lcolm X. He also speaks o black poverty, which he states, " is primarily due to the disruption of wealth power and income." He reiterates that capitalism is the root of the American racial dilemma, and that little real change can be achieved without the reorganization of the economy. West's comments about the "new black conservatives" is just one of the groups in black politics that is criticized in this book.

Williams, Dennis. 1997. Somebody's Child. New York: Simon & Schuster.

This is a book that tells the important story about the social significance and long-standing implications of fatherless families from a seldom heard point of view. The male siblings are linked by their struggles achieve peace with father and with the women in their lives as they move from adolescence adulthood. This text is filled with rich characterization and visual imagery.