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A review by poenaestante
Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness by Rebecca Walker
5.0
I read this book as part of an ongoing meditation on the tech industry and appropriation of hip-hop and black male swagger (despite the exclusion/erasure of black bodies). The gorgeous pieces in this book make so many of the points I wish to make. Now I need only draw the lines from there to here. bell hooks, Mat Johnson, Staceyann Chinn, and so many others paint the many hues of black cool, big and bold, yet subtle and precise.
This book is absolute perfection from beginning to end. I am grateful that my frustration with this phenomenon in my industry lead me to seek out perspectives on what it means to be black and cool and better understand why others reify it while at the same time "trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit" (Thanks, Jesse Williams).
I'm definitely gonna buy it so I have it as a reference. I'm certain I will need to pick it up many more times and will definitely be gifting it to friends and family. If you've taken Adichie's admonition to be wary of the single story, you'd do well to pick this up and immerse yourself in the great (and impossibly cool) multitudes.
This book is absolute perfection from beginning to end. I am grateful that my frustration with this phenomenon in my industry lead me to seek out perspectives on what it means to be black and cool and better understand why others reify it while at the same time "trying us on like costumes before discarding our bodies like rinds of strange fruit" (Thanks, Jesse Williams).
I'm definitely gonna buy it so I have it as a reference. I'm certain I will need to pick it up many more times and will definitely be gifting it to friends and family. If you've taken Adichie's admonition to be wary of the single story, you'd do well to pick this up and immerse yourself in the great (and impossibly cool) multitudes.