The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (a John Hope Franklin Center Book) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Are you looking to buy The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (a John Hope Franklin Center Book)? Here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (a John Hope Franklin Center Book). Check out the link below:

>> Click Here to See Compare Prices and Get the Best Offers

The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (a John Hope Franklin Center Book) ReviewFirst off, if you are expecting this book to be a straight biography of Bert Williams (as another reviewer obviously did), then this book is not one. And if you have any prejudices against cutting-edge scholarship on the complex histories of black global politics, literature and culture (as that same reviewer also obviously does), then this book is not for you. In fact, if you read the back cover of this brilliant book or its introduction or any of its pages (as the aforementioned reviewer clearly did not), then you will know exactly what this already widely influential book is: a philosophical and political study of the interrelations between African American, West Indian immigrants and Africans before and during the period known as the Harlem Renaissance.
Using Bert Williams-or rather his on-stage persona-as an example of "black on black cross-culturality"-Louis Chude-Sokei presents an intricate and immensely rich alternate reading of literary/cultural modernism. He also presents a daring critique of the implication of African American high and popular culture in American imperialism and American systems of prejudice and power. He also most importantly maps out the tense and productive relationships between non-American blacks and African Americans over the course of the early twentieth century.
Pointing out that for non-American blacks assimilation in America has been always double-into "white" America as well as into/against African America and its global influence-this book traces black on black performances from New York, to the Caribbean, to Europe and to Africa itself. It ranges from carnival and calypso to blues recordings, to Broadway to Hollywood. What links it all in this book is the presence, the memory and the example of Bert Williams, who he describes (via a creative remixing of W.C. Fields' famous quote) as still being The Funniest Man We NEVER Saw and the Saddest Man We NEVER Knew.
A remarkable, poetic and experimental work of the scholarly imagination. This book opens up a conversation and a set of issues that will define this new century.The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (a John Hope Franklin Center Book) Overview

Want to learn more information about The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora (a John Hope Franklin Center Book)?

>> Click Here to See All Customer Reviews & Ratings Now