Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness

excellent

It's hard for me to write a review of Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness. It's easy to be critical of texts, but when you love something, it's hard to describe or theorize. You just love it. I loved Dayo Olopade's criticism of white, purchasable hipsterdom. I loved bell hooks' attempt to reclaim coolness for women. And I loved Staceyann Chin's description of in-your-face lesbianism. And when I list some of the things I enjoyed about Black Cool, it's pretty evident that those were my best and easiest points of entry as a white, queer woman. That's also something to keep in mind when examining my interpretation of Walker's collection of essays on Black Cool.Although it may seem obvious to say, even the format of Walker's book is a reflection of what it says about Black Cool. It consists of sixteen vastly different essays that examine blackness, coolness, and where the two converge. But despite these differences that reflect the multiplicity of black experiences (blacknesses), the essays share many of the same themes. Through the range of descriptions of blackness in America, Jamaica, Ghana, and throughout the Diaspora conversations of trauma, coping mechanisms, boundaries of blackness, and individuality (both positive and negative) are repeated. The essays and stories reflect the constant battle of being black in America, and the ways in which America is not even close to being a post-race society.Central to the book is a theme of trauma. Whether the essay is focused on the history of blackness in America and the legacy of that history, or an individual rape story, or black male incarceration, trauma remains constant. I think Black Cool is about resituating that trauma in the center of conversations of blackness, while also placing an emphasis on the need for healing (coping mechanisms). In Esther Armah's essay "The Posse," she states, "But those wounds and scars passed from generation to generation, emotionally. Affecting how we move through the world, deal with and relate to one another, how we construct our institutions - not brick-and-mortar ones, but selves, each other, families, and community. It's time we heal that part of ourselves." (141). This theme of black trauma is essential for making claims about what it means to be black in America (and much of the world), and how in this context, blackness is very much in opposition to the concept of AmericaIn Mat Johnson's essay "The Geek," he introduces notions of boundaries to blackness, and the bending of these boundaries as a source of cool. He states, "Blackness is one of the few identities that comes with its own self-enforced expectation of expression." (14). This narrative fits in with Staceyann Chin's commentary on authenticity. Both show the limitations that exist for blackness, or rather the standards that create oppressive authenticity. While it is interesting to see that Mat Johnson, Staceyann Chin, and also Hank Willis Thomas see the blurring of these limits as a source coolness, it is essential to note that these boundaries exist. For the purpose of our class and the discussion of blackness in America, these essays all focus on the codes of blackness that exist and serve a function to rigidly enforce ideas of how to be black. While trauma may indicate that blackness and America are warring ideals, talking about limitations to blackness in mainstream culture shows how blackness has been tailored and shaped to try to be forced into the proverbial "box" that is America.Finally, I think it is important to look at how Black Cool discusses individuality. In the essays where black limitations are discussed (Johnson, Chin, Thomas), individuality is seen as critically important. In Black Cool, these ideas of individualism are often linked to the hip-hop generation or movement. In other essays, this individualism is seen as a limitation to black community and collective strength, or as Esther Armah says, "the cool of the collective." These two simultaneously diverging and converging ideas emphasize the need for black community, but also individuality, as long as that individuality is not characterized by consumerism and detachment. This theme of individuality reveals a lot about the struggle to be an individual black person in America, and also the struggle of blackness and black communities in America.Although this briefly scratched the surface of all the theoretical contributions and descriptions of blackness found in Black Cool, these themes reflect the complexities of blackness in America. They reveal the contradictions that exist between expectations and lived experience. They show how something like individuality can be so beneficial and central to being black, while also being a limitation to collective healing. The book, as a whole, proves the ever-remaining importance of race in American culture and politics; and it does it with humor, sadness, intelligence, and a little bit of cool.

I eat a huge, elaborate breakfast of oats, yogurt, luxurious dried fruits like dates, figs and apricots, nuts, fresh fruit, honey, cinnamon and herbal tea every morning, followed up with chocolate. While I'm lounging around wishing I'd been more moderate, my flatmate will make herself freshly ground coffee and toast spread with an indescribably aromatic combination of almond butter and fig preserve. The smell from the kitchen is intoxicating. I could react with envy and snipe at her meaninglessly. I could give in to the olfactory invitation and make toast myself, with frozen bread and whatever preserves I can muster, and make myself sick. But I've learned just to hover around the kitchen and breathe in the glorious fragrance.This book is not about me or for me; it doesn't need me and it doesn't care what I think, and as well as being about terrible things that haven't and cannot happen to me, it's kind of about wonderful things I can't have. This is a humbling thing.Written in love and pride, these essays on the perceptions and manifestations of Black genius, brilliance, beauty, spirit and solidarity are a diverse bunch. Like this reviewer I think the idea of an inherent 'Black Cool' is problematic (because it's essentialist, requiring monolithic definitions of Blackness, Cool etc), and while the book's blurb claims 'the ineffable aesthetic of BLACK COOL' as a subject, the form chosen by Walker has contributors fruitfully reflecting on aspects, 'streams' of cool, rather than struggling to nail down its nature. As a result, Black culture emerges arrayed in fabulous riches; multivalent, indestructable, transforming and transcending pain with intellect, strength, creativity, passion...I particularly loved dream hampton's astonishing personal story, Valorie Thomas' sophisticated discussion of diaspora vertigo and the power of vernacular culture and Dayo Olopade's postcolonially oriented essay on hipsters. Best of all is bell hooks' piece 'Forever', which tackles the difficult subject of the 'disassociation, hardheartedness, and violence' that she sees in 'most hip-hop culture', in contrast to the values of awareness, connectedness and judgement of the historical 'real cool'. While the blues manifested resistance to the patriarchal notion that 'real men' show no emotion, hooks writes, the new cool male 'proves his manhood by remaining rigidly attached to his position, refusing to change'"Much hiphop culture is mainstream because it is just a Black minstrel show - an imitation of dominator desire, not a rearticulation, not a radical alternative. It is not surprising then that patriarchal hip-hop culture has done little to save the lives of Black males and done more to teach them that the vision of "we real cool" includes the assumption that "we die soon"In other words, I'll venture, in its corporatised, White-appropriated, patriarchal form Black cool can be turned back on itself as a form of racist violence and oppression. Hank Williams Thomas makes the same point in his piece 'Soul', discussing the cynical exploitation of Black style by Nike. The really cool thing about this book is that it presents so many 'streams of Blackness' that are immune and resistant by nature to commodification and White supremacist patriarchy. They cannot be used up, sucked dry, sold out. No chance.So here I am peeking into the kitchen, trying not to make a nuisance of myself, happily basking in the sweetness that flows out so lavishly...

This is a really interesting book full of valuable perspectives and expertly written, I only wish Amazon would treat their staff better, provide healthcare so I didn’t feel like a trash person for ordering through them.

Excellent compilation of the black experience. Well written, wonderfully curated set of essays.

There could not be a more fitting title. This book is woven together in such a way each essay is a like a cool drink of water for a soul parched by white intellectual rhetoric, and molested by cultural bandits. This book gives a stamp of approval to claim blackness and all of its' inherent cool.