How to make a slave and other essays

Walker (Once More to the Ghetto), an Emerson College creative writing professor, delivers a stylish and thought-provoking collection of reflections on his personal and professional life. Beginning with Frederick Douglass's famous declaration, "You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man," Walker tackles a number of themes through his 22 selections. Parenting and disability is one: he is the child of blind parents, and the parent of a son with a neurological disorder that causes seizures. His life as a writer is another, with a particular emphasis on paying tribute to his late writing teacher, short story writer James Alan McPherson. Life in academia is yet another--the struggles of graduate school, job seeking, and attaining tenure, and, at times, of being the only Black person in a white milieu. Race threads its way through many of the essays, which reveal the subtle indignities often suffered by Black people in public settings. Nonetheless, he writes, "the stories that I favor are not only upsetting, but uplifting." Walker's rich compilation adds up to a rewardingly insightful self-portrait that reveals how one man relates to various aspects of his identity. (Nov.)

Powerful essays offers an incisive glimpse into life as a Black man in America. In this collection, Walker demonstrates the keen intellect and direct style that characterized his acclaimed 2010 memoir, Street Shadows. In an account of how he was racially profiled by a security guard at Emerson College, where he teaches creative writing, the author deftly combines both humor and humanity without obscuring the impact of such experiences on him as a husband, father, son, and educator. "The stories I favor," he writes, "are not only upsetting but also uplifting; they are rich with irony and tinged with humor; they are unique, in some way, and lend themselves to interesting digressions, and their protagonists always confront villains, even if not always with success--when I come into a race story with these components, I prefer to delay its telling, allowing it to breathe, so to speak, like a newly uncorked Merlot." Walker candidly considers his struggles discussing race with his children; clearly depicts the racism embedded in restaurant seating arrangements; and expressively recounts the terrifying spiral of fear, anger, and distress he experienced after seeking medical attention for his son, who had suffered multiple seizures. The author's no-nonsense, few-words-wasted approach lends itself just as readily to an account of the exhilaration he and his siblings felt while watching the The Jackson 5ive cartoon in their family's religious household in 1971: "Breaking the Sabbath was a violation of God's law, pretty significant stuff, but then so, too, was an all-Negro cartoon." In the moving "Dragon Slayers," Walker shows how James Alan McPherson, an instructor at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, changed his outlook and approach as a writer. "My stories showed people being affected by drug addiction, racism, poverty, murder, crime, violence," he writes, "but they said nothing about the spirit that, despite being confronted with what often amounted to certain defeat, would continue to struggle and aspire for something better." Crafted with honesty and wry comedic flair, these essays are both engaging and enraging. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

I was at a Christmas party with a man who wanted me to hate him. I should hate all whites, he felt, for what they have done to me. I thought hard about what whites have done to me. I was forty, old enough to have accumulated a few unpleasant racial encounters, but nothing of any lasting significance came to mind. The man was aston- ished at this response. "How about slavery?" he asked. I explained, as politely as I could, that I had not been a slave. "But you feel its effects," he snapped. "Racism, dis- crimination, and prejudice will always be a problem for you in this country. White people," he insisted, "are youroppressors." I glanced around the room, just as one of my oppressors happened by. She was holding a tray of cana- pés. She offered me one. I asked the man if, as a form of reparations, I should take two. It was midway through my third year in academia. I had survived mountains of papers, apathetic students, cantankerous colleagues, boring meetings, sleep deprivation, and two stalkers, and now I was up against a man who had been mysteriously transported from 1962. He even looked the part, with lavish sideburns and solid, black-rimmed glasses. He wasn't an academic, but rather the spouse of one. In fact, he had no job at all, a dual act of defiance, he felt, against a patriarchal and capitalistic society. He was a fun person to talk with, especially if, like me, you enjoyed driving white liberals up the wall. And the surest way to do that, if you were black, was to deny them the chance to pity you. He'd spotted me thirty minutes earlier while I stood alone at the dining room table, grazing on various appe- tizers. My wife, Brenda, had drifted off somewhere, and the room buzzed with pockets of conversation and laughter. The man joined me. I accepted his offer of a gin and tonic. We talked local politics for a moment, or rather he talked and I listened, because, being relatively new to this small town, it wasn't something I knew much about, before moving on to the Patriots, our kids, and finally my classes. He was particularly interested in my African Amer- ican Literature course. "Did you have any black students?" he inquired. "We started with two," I said, "but ended with twenty- eight." I let his puzzled expression linger until I'd eaten a stuffed mushroom. "Everyone who takes the course has to agree to be black for the duration of the semester." "Really?" he asked, laughing. "What do they do, smear their faces with burnt cork?" "Not a bad idea," I said. "But for now, they simply have to think like blacks, but in a way different from what they probably expect." I told him that black literature is often approached as records of oppression, but that my stu- dents don't focus on white cruelty but rather its flip side: black courage. "After all," I continued, "slaves and their immediate descendants were by and large heroic, not pathetic, or I wouldn't be standing here." The man was outraged. "You're letting whites off the hook," he said. "You're absolving them of responsibility, of the obligation to atone for past and present wrongs . . ." He went on in this vein for a good while, and I am pleased to say that I goaded him until he stormed across the room and stood with his wife, who, after he'd spoken with her, glanced in my direction to see, no doubt, a traitor to the black race. That was unfortunate. I'd like to think I betray whites too. Excerpted from How to Make a Slave and Other Essays by Jerald Walker All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.