8.2 /10 1 Votes
Language English Originally published 1971 Country United States of America | 4.1/5 Goodreads Publication date 1971 Publisher J. B. Lippincott & Co. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar James Baldwin books, Cultural anthropology books | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Margaret mead james baldwin a rap on race 1971
A Rap on Race is a non-fiction book co-authored by writer and social critic James Baldwin and anthropologist Margaret Mead. It consists of transcriptions of conversations between the two.
Contents
Summary introduction
The transcript mentions 'New Guinea, South Africa, Women's Lib, the South, slavery, Christianity, their early childhood upbringings, Israel, the Arabs, the bomb, Paris, Istanbul, the English language, Huey Newton, John Wayne, the black bourgeoisie, Baldwin's 2-year-old grand nephew and Professor Mead's daughter.'
Literary significance and criticism
The book was dismissed as "the same old bilge you've heard from the fellow on the next stool to you in the saloon " by a reviewer at the New York Times when it was first published. More recently, writer Maria Popova called the book "a remarkable and prescient piece of the cultural record" and "a bittersweet testament to one of the recurring themes in their dialogue — our tendency to sideline the past as impertinent to the present, only to rediscover how central it is in understanding the driving forces of our world and harnessing them toward a better future."