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A review by outcolder
The Angela Y. Davis Reader by Joy James
5.0
Some of the highlights for me were:
-- the essay on the coming obsolescence of housework which included a response to the Wages For Housework movement that I found appealing
-- the essays or chapters on the blues and on African-American photography... but especially the blues... I have been meaning to read her books on the blues women for a while... her arguments that there are politics woven through all the lyrics about sex and violence are convincing. The idea that women choosing their own sexual partners takes on a different meaning in the aftermath of slavery was not something I had considered before, and of course that white listeners like me might be misunderstanding or just plain missing the meaning behind certain kinds of African American vocal expression is something I already know so to have her help with the keys to it and therefore add new layers to appreciate in the blues is exciting. I want to read those books by her even more now.
-- the stuff about what the 60s/early 70s black power movement meant in the 1990s. The book came out in the 1990s, at a time when mainstream hip hop culture had appropriated a lot of the symbols of earlier black nationalism without really engaging in the substance or examining the internal critiques those movements were experiencing at the time. It reminds me of the Chris Rock parody of an Afrocentric rapper who simply shouts "I'm black" or something over and over with his fist in the air and wearing a dashiki, except Angela Davis is obviously more sympathetic and nuanced than Chris Rock. Davis's reaction to a Vibe Magazine fashion spread based on the photographs of her own arrest and trial is particularly moving.
It is also nice to reflect how much of an impact people like Davis have had on ethnic studies and feminist, anti-racist, socialist activist thought. Although everything seems pretty bleak right now, with a far-right US president promising an executive branch full of avowed white supremacists, a return to a militarized war on drugs and expanded mass incarceration, it seems to me that the movements and people who will resist all that are better equipped to build alliances and attract allies than they were in the 60s and the 70s and much of that has to do with the work of great public intellectuals like Angela Davis.
-- the essay on the coming obsolescence of housework which included a response to the Wages For Housework movement that I found appealing
-- the essays or chapters on the blues and on African-American photography... but especially the blues... I have been meaning to read her books on the blues women for a while... her arguments that there are politics woven through all the lyrics about sex and violence are convincing. The idea that women choosing their own sexual partners takes on a different meaning in the aftermath of slavery was not something I had considered before, and of course that white listeners like me might be misunderstanding or just plain missing the meaning behind certain kinds of African American vocal expression is something I already know so to have her help with the keys to it and therefore add new layers to appreciate in the blues is exciting. I want to read those books by her even more now.
-- the stuff about what the 60s/early 70s black power movement meant in the 1990s. The book came out in the 1990s, at a time when mainstream hip hop culture had appropriated a lot of the symbols of earlier black nationalism without really engaging in the substance or examining the internal critiques those movements were experiencing at the time. It reminds me of the Chris Rock parody of an Afrocentric rapper who simply shouts "I'm black" or something over and over with his fist in the air and wearing a dashiki, except Angela Davis is obviously more sympathetic and nuanced than Chris Rock. Davis's reaction to a Vibe Magazine fashion spread based on the photographs of her own arrest and trial is particularly moving.
It is also nice to reflect how much of an impact people like Davis have had on ethnic studies and feminist, anti-racist, socialist activist thought. Although everything seems pretty bleak right now, with a far-right US president promising an executive branch full of avowed white supremacists, a return to a militarized war on drugs and expanded mass incarceration, it seems to me that the movements and people who will resist all that are better equipped to build alliances and attract allies than they were in the 60s and the 70s and much of that has to do with the work of great public intellectuals like Angela Davis.