The Matter of Black Lives

July 5, 2021
New Yorker staff writer Cobb (The Substance of Hope) and editor Remnick (The Bridge) present an expansive anthology of pieces from the magazine’s archives on the “political, cultural, and economic questions surrounding race and Black achievement.” James Baldwin’s “Letter from a Region in My Mind,” later published as The Fire Next Time, opens the proceedings, setting a high bar that the collection, for the most part, maintains. Other highlights include Hilton Als’s “Homecoming,” which interweaves reflections on the 1967 Brownsville uprising and the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by police in 2020 with insights into the cultural burdens placed on Black artists; Renata Adler’s report on the 1964 Selma to Montgomery civil rights march, which captures the homespun feel of the movement before it was mythologized; and Sarah Broom’s “The Yellow House,” a poignant meditation on the loss of her family home in Hurricane Katrina that became a National Book Award–winning memoir. Beyond the stellar prose, what unites these pieces, which range widely in length, tone, and point of view, is Baldwin’s insight, paraphrased by Cobb, that “the American future is precisely as bright or as dark as our capacity to grapple with .” This standout anthology illuminates a matter of perennial concern.

Starred review from July 15, 2021
Exemplary gathering of writings on Black history, arts, politics, and culture in America. Not all the writers in this New Yorker compilation are Black--e.g., Renata Adler, Calvin Trillin, Malcolm Gladwell--but the most compelling of the pieces are drawn from lived experience. As Cobb writes, "in its early decades, [the magazine] largely kept the subject of race at a distinct remove from its readers." However, in 1962, as the civil rights movement grew in strength and intensity, the New Yorker published an essay that resounds throughout this book. Called "Letter From a Region in My Mind," James Baldwin's piece angrily denounced a system in which "the social treatment accorded even the most successful Negroes proved that one needed, in order to be free, something more than a bank account," one in which Black people "are taught really to despise themselves from the moment their eyes open on the world." In the following essay, Toni Morrison recounts an attempt to write about race in such a way as "to defang cheap racism, annihilate and discredit the routine, easy, available color fetish, which is reminiscent of slavery itself." Politicians come in for close scrutiny, with Barack Obama called into question for avoiding overt questions of race while addressing Black audiences with "veiled dispatches and surreptitious winks," while forgotten heroes get their due. For example, Kathryn Schulz praises Pauli Murray, whose "law-school peers were accustomed to being startled by her," both for her brilliance and foresight: In 1944, she prophesied that within 25 years, Plessy v. Ferguson would be overturned (it took a decade). Rappers, artists, curators, and scholars all get their say. Most urgently, the final section of the book addresses the emergence of an ever more organized Black resistance following the murder of George Floyd. Other contributors include Jamaica Kincaid, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Hilton Als, Stanley Crouch, Zadie Smith, and Edwidge Danticat. An essential volume for readers interested in the Black past and present, as all readers should be.

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Starred review from October 1, 2021

In his introduction, Cobb (The Substance of Hope) grounds this essential anthology in the American experience: "Race has exerted a profound, distorting effect on American life--all of it, not simply the portion labeled with the racial modifier 'Black.'" More than an antiracist reading list, this collection of mindfully curated historic and contemporary New Yorker texts surveys a wide range of voices and narratives, from Rebecca West's 1947 account of a lynching trial in South Carolina to Kelefa Sanneh's recent analysis of corporate hip-hop. It includes canonical authors (James Baldwin, Jamaica Kincaid, Toni Morrison) alongside recent works by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Jill Lepore, and Elizabeth Alexander. Cobb and Remnick have assembled a dialogue across generations of New Yorker contributors that encourages readers to engage with the nation's history of racism and potential for change. VERDICT Recommended for all libraries, this anthology offers an engaging and highly relevant selection for American audiences.--Asa Drake, Marion Cty. P.L., FL

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