Reviews for The Blacker the Berry

The average rating for The Blacker the Berry based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-03-01 00:00:00 Kirvette Gaskins I always wondered why Western authors who happened to visit my country from Richard Burton to Karen Blixen always claimed that Somali were far more superior to other African although they didn't give reason for that superiority. And after reading this book it made me more color conscious than ever, did those authors made their assertion because Somali had less thick lip than other Africans? Or they made their assertion because Somali have smoother hair than the African people? Or maybe Somali skin color are lighter due to inter marriage with Arabs and Europeans than other hinterland Africans and for this they can claim to be special than Africans. Who does light skin, brown eyes, more pointed nose and more smooth hair made you believe to be superior to people who happened to be more colored and have been blessed with more darker skin Reading this novel made me get a glimpse of what it means to black in lighter skin society, from the Bantu who live in southern part of my country and who still face prejudice and discrimination because he is more black than the usual Somali to Darfur where Arabized African attack other native Africans But this book doesn't talk about the supposed superiority of Arabized Africans or mixed race individuals but the focus of the novel is how lighter skin people treat their darker skin people within the same race. Here comes Wallace Thurman novel which was published in 1929 which tells the story of Emma Lou who is African American girl who faced systematic racism from her race just because she were more black than her what her family wanted her to be What struck me in the novel was from the start you are told what fate wait our narrator "More acutely than ever before Emma Lou began to feel that her luscious black complexion was somewhat of a liability, and that her marked color variation from the other people in her environment was a decided curse. " Her first encounter with racism would come with from within her family who treated as curse because she were more darker than her family was and the family motto was "Whiter and whiter every generation," she deviated from their goal and as a result was treated badly just for being more blacker than family . Getting tired of her mother and grandmother racism she tries to run away from home to university where she beliefs that intra racial racism is something from provincial and it wouldn't happen in big cities let alone in University but after being shunned from every club meeting her collage had she would run out to Harlem where she develop hypersensitivity and become more aware of her status and develops inferiority superiority complex and starts to treat men with the same racism she used to hate and fight against. And eventually tired of self-hate and self-pitying she resolves to change but also accept who she is "We are all living in a totally white world, where all standards are the standards of the white man, and where almost invariably what the white man does is right, and what the black man does is wrong, unless it is precedented by something a white man has done." " What she needed to do now was to accept her black skin as being real and unchangeable, to realize that certain things were, had been, and would be, and with this in mind begin life anew, always fighting, not so much for acceptance by other people, but for acceptance of herself by herself ."

Review # 2 was written on 2018-01-31 00:00:00 Bill Carter Kendrick Lamar made me read it! His song "The Blacker the Berry" was inspired by this classic Harlem Renaissance novel, and when you know Lamar's lyrics and read Thurman's text, you realize how these two works of art are reinforcing each other, and the effect is truly amazing. Thurman's book was first published 1929 and is a critique of a topic that has remained controversial until this day: Colorism, meaning the "prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color" (Alice Walker). The protagonist Emma Lou has very dark skin, a physical trait that is perceived as undesirable by her lighter family members and many other people she encounters. The novel talks about her experiences growing up in Idaho, studying in California and later working in Harlem, how people treat her and what it does to her psyche. Emma Lou wants to belong, but due to the society she is living in, she has a hard time finding herself and her place in the world. Although I am pretty sure the expression didn't exist back then, Thurman takes an intersectional view and also shows how the factors of gender, class, and wealth play into the design of communities and affect Emma Lou's situation. The story seems to be highly influenced by the life of Wallace Thurman himself, who was not only dark-skinned like Emma Lou, but also struggled for acceptance as a homosexual man. I was surprised that the excellent foreword of the new edition, written by Stanford Professor Allyson Hobbs, also mentions Kendrick Lamar's song. She writes: "Thurman's novel reveals the interracial conflict that results from living in a racist America; almost ninety years later, Lamar's focus is the racist system itself", and dissects some of his lyrics - great stuff. So thanks, Mr. Lamar, for pointing this book out to me, I will soon go on to read Roots: The Saga of an American Family while listening to "King Kunta"!