Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

lures and yet, in a most interesting
way, serve as a reflection of just how
diverse were the backgrounds that
shaped the sensibilities of the three
extraordinary artists .
Contemporary Literature features
the works of Albert Murray, John A .
Williams, Paule Marshall, Ernest J .
Games, William Melvin Kelley, Melvin
B . Tolson, Arna Bontemps, Robert
E . Hayden, Dudley Randall,
Margaret A . Walker, Gwendolyn
Brooks, James A . Emanuel, Mari
Evans, LeRoi Jones, Arthur P. Davis,
Philip Butcher, Nathan A . Scott Jr .,
and Julian Mayfield . It is worth
noting, I think, that the italicized
Confronted with a book like How
We Live : Contemporary Life in Contemporary
Fiction, the inclination is
to shrug, throw it aside, and proceed
to something more relevant and instructive
for black people . The time
has long since passed when black
people should waste their energies
challenging the racist assumptions at
the base of such books ; there is much
work to be done ; the task of turning
the attention of black people away
from the integrationist lures which
are all-pervasive and toward the
possibilities inherent in submergence
in their own history and culture is
monumental ; it is obviously wasteful
to debate the racists and-worserecognizing
them merely feeds their
arrogance and depravity.
Even so, it is important to keep in
mind the many millions of black people-especially
students-who are
influenced by the kind of racist tripe
which passes for "criticism" of black
literary works . Generations of black
students have gone out into the world
as professionals believing that the
white view of black literature is the
NEGRO DIGEST March 1969
How We Live?
authors' contributions to black literature
would include their having,
along with the writers of the Early
Literature and the Negro Awakening,
profoundly influenced the others
appearing in this final section . Space
will not permit much comment on
the works of the above, but the short
stories of Gains and Kelley are witness
to exceptional talents . Julian
Mayfield's essay, "Into the Mainstream
and Oblivion," brings us into
the day that is upon us, a day one
can hardly hope to comprehend
while ignoring one's own writers and
persisting in the belief that the prophets
were white.-Dnvm LLORENS
valid view, and there are far, far too
many black teachers who slavishly
repeat the anti-black nonsense they
have learned in the nation's colleges
and universities . Black students must
not be abandoned to the insidious
propaganda which holds, in essence,
that black writers rarely produce
works of art because, of course, there
is an element of "protest" in their
work. Only white writers have the
"objectivity" toward race which is
necessary to produce art when the
subject matter is race . Pure crap .
And yet it is propagated everywhere
. . .
It cannot, therefore, be ignored as
it so richly deserves to be . In How
We Live, a big (1007 pages), expensive
( $12 .50 ) anthology compiled by
L . Rust Hills and his wife Penny
Chapin and published by Macmillan,
the racist line is presented with startling
candor . The section dealing with
black life and literature is small (123
pages) and toward the rear of the
book . Six authors are presentedand
three of that six are white!
Now, here, in the editors' own
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