On Black Men

Mutilated, dying, or dead, black men play a role in the psychic life of culture. From national dreams to media fantasies, there is a persistent imagining of what black men must be. This book explores the legacy of that role, particularly its violent effect on how black men have learned to see themselves and one another. David Marriott draws upon popular culture, ranging from lynching photographs to current Hollywood film, as well as the ideas of key thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and John Edgar Wideman, to reveal a vicious pantomime of unvarying reification and compulsive fascination, of whites looking at themselves through images of black desolation, and of blacks dispossessed by that process.

Columbia University Press

Marriott draws upon popular culture, ranging from lynching photographs to current Hollywood film, as well as the ideas of key thinkers, including Frantz Fanon, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and John Edgar Wideman, to reveal a vicious pantomime of unvarying reification and compulsive fascination, of whites looking at themselves through images of black desolation, and of blacks dispossessed by that process.

Booknews

Marriott (literature scholar, academic affiliation not provided) offers five elegantly written, insightful essays exploring the symbolic code of black men in the psychic life of culture. Themes examined include photography and lynching; photography and fantasies of black men; black types/stereotypes; an account of Frantz Fanon, a disillusioned black Frenchman who fought in WWII but found himself despised by the French he helped liberate; and stories of black fatherhood. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

David Marriott is lecturer in English at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London.