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A review by amynbell
Brutal Imagination by Cornelius Eady
4.0
I found this book on my office bookshelf and read it while waiting for my computer to update, so I didn't know anything about it going in. Although this was written in 2001, I had to access my 1994 pop news brain file for a proper reading. The book has 2 very distinct sections which highlight the voices of 2 separate black men that the author creates through his "brutal imagination". Both stories are written in verse.
The first story is written with the voice of the eventually-found-to-be-fictitious black man accused of carjacking and kidnapping Susan Smith's children in 1994. If you recall the outcome, 9 days after reporting the children taken, she admitted to drowning them in her car. But for those 9 days, this black man existed in the minds of news watchers, and he has been given a voice:
There's a small interlude section where the writer laments with various fictitious black characters who were also brought to life without their consent: Uncle Tom, Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, Buckwheat, Stepin Fetchit. Of Uncle Ben he says, "Like him I live, but never agreed to it.".
The second story in the book became part of the text to a "roots" jazz opera called The Running Man which seems to be about an intelligent, well-read black man who chooses a life of crime because it chooses him.
I think this is the message of the stories--that white men (and women) have created and believed a narrative of what a black man is, creating this in both fiction and reality through their words and actions. Break something enough times and it stays broken. I wanted this book to end with a solution. But it doesn't. 18 years after this was written, we still haven't arrived at a solution. The author says of the "running man" of the 2nd narrative, "what pushes him up will keep him down." Basically, the circumstances which create him keep him from overcoming. Perhaps we're progressing as a society. Maybe there eventually will be enough voices to change the narrative, but we still have a long way to go. These narratives still don't have happy endings when, in 2018, a black security guard can be assumed by a policeman to be the perpetrator because he's black. Why? Because the policeman created a fictitious black shooter that needed to be stopped, and he stopped him. Solution? Let me know when you find one.
The first story is written with the voice of the eventually-found-to-be-fictitious black man accused of carjacking and kidnapping Susan Smith's children in 1994. If you recall the outcome, 9 days after reporting the children taken, she admitted to drowning them in her car. But for those 9 days, this black man existed in the minds of news watchers, and he has been given a voice:
A few nights ago
A man swears he saw me pump gas
With the children
At a convenience store
Like a punchline you get the next day
There's a small interlude section where the writer laments with various fictitious black characters who were also brought to life without their consent: Uncle Tom, Uncle Ben, Aunt Jemima, Buckwheat, Stepin Fetchit. Of Uncle Ben he says, "Like him I live, but never agreed to it.".
The second story in the book became part of the text to a "roots" jazz opera called The Running Man which seems to be about an intelligent, well-read black man who chooses a life of crime because it chooses him.
Nothing can run when you've broken its legs.
Nothing can fly when you trim its feathers
With a knife, a stone...
I am young
And they think
Maybe I'll escape
Becoming a certain type
Of man...
I can read the white
Man's voodoo,
Powerful spells
Which have eaten
The world,
And prevented
Anything good from sticking here,
I am young
And they hope
I will hone my studies
Into a terrible blade.
I think this is the message of the stories--that white men (and women) have created and believed a narrative of what a black man is, creating this in both fiction and reality through their words and actions. Break something enough times and it stays broken. I wanted this book to end with a solution. But it doesn't. 18 years after this was written, we still haven't arrived at a solution. The author says of the "running man" of the 2nd narrative, "what pushes him up will keep him down." Basically, the circumstances which create him keep him from overcoming. Perhaps we're progressing as a society. Maybe there eventually will be enough voices to change the narrative, but we still have a long way to go. These narratives still don't have happy endings when, in 2018, a black security guard can be assumed by a policeman to be the perpetrator because he's black. Why? Because the policeman created a fictitious black shooter that needed to be stopped, and he stopped him. Solution? Let me know when you find one.