Black History Month 2021 Reading Project

Experiencing a #readingblackout

In 2018 YouTube book reviewer Denise D. Cooper challenged herself to read only books by Black authors for an entire year. She created the #readingblackout hashtag to document her efforts and encourage others to follow suit. Since then, many others have built upon that idea, especially during the celebration of Black History Month. Every February libraries around the country, including Southeast Missouri State University’s Kent Library, put together suggested reading lists to help their readers learn more about authors, events, and parts of history they might not otherwise be exposed to.

In previous years I have had good intentions of diving into these reading lists, but never really committed to the effort. This year was different. For the entire month of February I made a conscious decision to read only books by Black authors. These books came from a variety of reading lists and the recommendations of family and friends. All of the writers were American, although one is an immigrant and another is a child of immigrants. I tried to find a mix of male and female authors, as well as more challenging literature and lighter “bedtime reading.”

The reading list

• The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, by Ernest J. Gaines (1971): This novel is in the format of a series of tape-recorded interviews with a 108 year old former slave. It traces her life from being born on a plantation to living in the Jim Crow south to the 1950-60’s civil rights movement. Even as a fictional character, Jane brought a personal connection to critical events and persons in Black history. She allows the reader experience the emotions of moment that is not possible when simply reading a textbook.

• Binti Trilogy, by Nnedi Okorafor (2015): This series of novellas features a young Himba girl who is the first of her people to gain admittance to the prestigious Oomza University on a planet lightyears away from earth. The novels wrestle with her desire to maintain her identity and embrace the outside world. They were my first ever experience with Afrofuturism, a genre of science-fiction focused on African culture as opposed building on European and American cultural norms.

• Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah (2016): This memoir highlights Trevor Noah’s experiences growing up biracial in Apartheid and post-Apartheid era South Africa. It is simultaneously enjoyable and heartbreaking. He highlights how many similarities there are between American and South African versions of racism. There are also particular manifestations that have resulted from the unique histories of each country. His ability to simultaneously speak as both an insider and outsider helps the reader see both their own and someone else’s culture with new eyes.

• In My Father’s House, by Ernest J. Gaines (1978): This novel follows Rev. Phillip Martin, a pastor and civil rights leader in Louisiana as his self-destructive past comes back to haunt him. It was an engaging study in relationships between parents and children as well as demonstration of how complex social movements actually are. All too often, people think of the civil rights movement as a monolith. In the middle of an ongoing family crisis, the characters also struggle with each over the most effective way to respond to the injustice around them.

• The Long Fall, by Walter Mosley (2009): This detective series served as my bedtime reading. Written in a first-person noir style, it features the delightfully flawed character, Leonid McGill, the Black son of a Marxist revolutionary who is trying to come to escape his past life working on the wrong side of the law.

• Known to Evil, by Walter Mosely (2010): This is the second book in the Leonid McGill detective series. In addition to the wonderfully complex plots, one of the things that I most appreciated about this series is how directly it deals with the realities of living and working in multi-racial modern day New York.

• Song of Solomon, by Toni Morrison (1977): In 1930’s North Carolina a Black insurance agent throws himself off the top of his building. The dead agent is a member of an organization that retaliates against Whites for the killing of Blacks. The event causes a local woman to go into labor and her son is the first Black baby to be born in the Whites-only hospital. The novel traces that baby’s life as he grows and encounters the injustice of the world firsthand. For full disclosure, I have not yet finished this book. Morrison’s writing is exceptionally intricate, beautiful, and thought provoking. Song of Solomon does not lend itself to speedy bedtime reading. This is a novel I will be sitting with for a while.

Some helpful gleanings

Quite obviously, no amount of reading is ever going to allow me to truly understand what it is like to live as a Black person in American society. That is not my intent. White people are not the audience for many of these books. Instead, my goal was to get a chance to read over the shoulder of others. It was my prayer that listening in on conversations I have never been a part of before would allow me to be stretched.

The experience of temporarily being on the outside looking in was the most valuable part of this month of reading. Each of these books served as a reminder of just how much more world there is outside my own cultural bubble. White people often take for granted the fact that most American culture is built on the foundation of European customs and traditions. As a white person it is easy to take for granted how much European history, laws, traditions, and cultural preferences set the standard for American culture. It is neither good or bad. It just is. This reality has a tendency, however, to blind us to other ways of being in the world.

These books served as a glimpse into cultures where whiteness was not the assumed standard. When the character Jane Pitman used the term “people” she was always referring to Black people. White people were always the ones given an adjective. Blackness was her standard. Non-black was the exception. The entire world of Binti was crafted without any reference to Europeans or European culture. There was no malice to this. Just as an Irish writer might use Dublin as the default, for Binti, Africa was the standard.

Unfortunately, these books were also reminders of the inherent violence of racism. Jane Pitman was a reminder that not only slavery itself, but also Jim Crow segregation, was enforced through systemic and overwhelming violence. That violent suppression was not simply a historical relic, it continued through Rev. Martin’s struggle in the civil rights era and even played a part in Leonid McGill’s life in 2008 New York City. This omnipresent violence is what makes racism so damaging. It is not simply that some people are bigots. It is the that those bigots also have the power to inflict that hatred on others.

Both of Ernest Gaines’ novels and Trevor Noah’s memoir demonstrated how damaging racism is to the souls of those experiencing oppression. Noah also describes the brutalizing effect this casual violence has on Black people themselves with families and neighbors experiencing destabilizing cycles of abuse, addiction and poverty. Both Jane Pitman and Rev. Phillip Martin’s sons are prevented by the systems around them from stability within the family. Educational and economic opportunities remain unavailable. Gradually the disadvantage becomes normalized to the point that many of those who are oppressed cannot imagine any other alternative to their current reality. Trevor Noah accounts much of his success to the fact that his mom helped expose him to a world outside the poverty and oppression he grew up with so that he might be able to imagine an alternative reality for himself.

Even with the dark shadow of racism, black history is not simply about trauma. Every one of these book conveyed hope, excitement, resiliency, and the joy of living. Black cultural icons were celebrated. Jane Pitman encountered a procession of celebrated Black scientists, artists, and thinkers. The wisdom of these leaders and personalities informed the vigorous debates within Rev. Martin’s civil rights committee, between Jane’s neighbors, and South Africa’s ANC and Freedom parties. Walter Mosley and Trevor Noah exposed me to entire genres of music, dance, and food I had never heard of. African traditions and languages were celebrated in Binti and Born a Crime. I was grateful for the chance to see the amazing diversity of Black culture on full display on every page.

In the end, this Black History reading project demonstrated just how much I have yet to learn. This month was simply a chance to dip my toe into the water of a world I have never been properly introduced to. Growing up, I was given only the briefest introduction to Black history: slavery, Jim Crow, civil rights, the end. Obviously, there is so much more to the story. I am grateful for Denise Cooper’s challenge and the way #readingblackout has expanded my perspective just a little bit and helped me gain a better perspective on the world around me.