Salon | The role model syndrome

T A B L E+T A L K
How would you translate Molière? Which translations of the classics are your favorite? Talk about it in English in the Books section of Table Talk.

R E V I E W S

Jackie Robinson
By Arnold Rampersad
A serious, competent -- but ultimately numbing -- biography of the man who broke baseball's color line
(10/21/97)

R E C E N T L Y
From fisting to Flaubert
By Daniel Reitz
(10/15/97)
Satan goes to Harvard
By Mary Gaitskill
(10/13/97)
Why did they ever ban a book this bad?
By Garrison Keillor
(10/13/97)
Declaration of independence
By Joyce Carol Oates
(09/29/97)
One nation, undercover
By Laura Miller
(09/26/97)
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BOOKS ARCHIVE

spacer Illustration by Katherine Streeter
T H E+role model+S Y N D R O M E
Two new memoirs by talented black women show how hard it is to reconcile good writing and racial politics.
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STRAIGHT, NO CHASER: How I Became a Grown-up Black Woman
By Jill Nelson, Putnam, 224 pages

TRESPASSING: My Sojourn in the Halls of Privilege
By Gwendolyn M. Parker, Houghton Mifflin, 208 pages
BY JAKE LAMAR | epic struggle has characterized most of the history of African-Americans, but the 29 years since the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. have been essentially unheroic. Black political leaders have, for the most part, been as corrupt or ineffectual as their white counterparts. The dominant conservative culture condemns the so-called "black underclass," blaming its plight on "social pathology" and a lack of "personal responsibility." Meanwhile, a growing black middle class has tangled with the insidious ironies of integration. In the 1990s, there are few rallying points for black solidarity. For contemporary African-Americans, ambivalence and ambiguity are as much a part of the social order as oppression and strife once were. Today's racial situation is not simply tragic and volatile -- it's also absurd.
Most of the masterpieces of African-American literature were written during the age of epic struggle. And some of the best black writers of the post-civil rights era -- Toni Morrison, August Wilson, Ernest Gaines -- have set their most powerful tales in the bad old days when whites were more clearly evil and blacks more unassailably noble. But what about these days? How does the creative, socially engaged black writer tackle the murky racial complexities -- and absurdities -- of more recent times?
Any writer who does must contend with two rigid wings of America's literary establishment: white folks who consider themselves so racially enlightened that they need never question their own attitudes; and black folks who want to make sure that those enlightened whites have a good impression -- a "positive image" -- of most black people, but especially of black people like themselves. The members of the white wing prefer books about the sort of black people they rarely, if ever, meet -- poor rural folk or ghetto dwellers, victims to pity, gangstas to fear, blacks they can feel superior to. These arbiters of literature don't mind hearing about difficult racial questions so long as they are presented politely and do not provoke anything like self-doubt. The members of the black wing of the establishment prefer tales of triumph over tragedy. They are not very keen on the absurdity of race. They want black literature to be safe, uplifting, mainstream. They want black writers to be careful what they say, especially when writing about the black middle class. The underlying concern -- the source of their anxiety -- is always the same: "What are the white folks going to think?"
Two strong new books, Jill Nelson's "Straight, No Chaser: How I Became a Grown-up Black Woman" and Gwendolyn M. Parker's "Trespassing: My Sojourn in the Halls of Privilege," examine, in highly personal ways, America's post-'60s racial conundrum. These books are both memoirs. Both are written by black women from affluent backgrounds. Both authors were born in the early '50s. But their takes on what used to be called the Black Experience could hardly be more different.
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N E X T+P A G E+| The crazy things white people think

ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE STREETER