In his excellent biography of Brooklyn Dodgers infielder Jackie Robinson, author Arnold Rampersad has painted with a crisp and lively narrative an objective, balanced , and candid portrait of a legend. Here is seen the complex, driven man that was Jackie Robinson, "warts" and all. He was the proud and fiercely determined African American athlete, extraordinarily gifted in at least four sports; a sometimes overly sensitive man who despised racism always fought against it, even in the pre-Civil Rights era of the 1930s and 1940s, and even at the risk of conviction by military court-martial. He used an unconquerable will and ambition to became a football, baseball, basketball and track star at Pasadena Junior College; one of the greatest football running backs in UCLA history, and ultimately, under the guidance of legendary Brooklyn Dodgers General Manager Branch Rickey, the first African American professional baseball player of the modern era. Rampersad traces Robinson's struggle against racism during his early Dodger years; it is a poignant and compelling story.

The book also shows the more human side of Robinson: a quiet and sensitive man, and a political activist whose fight for racial equality was consistent throughout his life; a wonderfully loving husband but sometimes distant father; and a businessman of tremendous integrity. At Rampersad's hands, Jackie Robinson is a genuinely heroic and admirable person. This is a book which allows the reader to really get to know its subject. It is one of the finest biographies I've read in many years. Highly recommended!

I wasn't a huge baseball fan when I started this book, but I'd heard of Jackie Robinson. I used to think I knew who he was. Well, you don't anything until you read this book! The comforting text inches over every exciting aspect of Jackie Robinson's life. It was written using information that Jackie Robinson's wife provided for the first time. The topics range from rising above racism to sharing personal family experiences. If you love baseball, this book is absolutely for you. However, if you're not really into sports (like me), then you'll still adore this true-life story that seems almost unreal.

i'm not particularly interested in baseball, but i am particularly interested in American history from the human perspective. i could have read a much more dry account of the turmoils that dominated American race relations throughout the middle of the 20th century, but instead i've read this fascinating account of those terrible, backward days from the perspective of a true pioneer, Mr. Jackie Robinson.

of course he is looked back on now as a symbol, a mythological figure. i always knew peripherally of Jackie as the same thing most people do: the first black man to play major league baseball, a step forward & up in the painful struggle of the times. but this book presents him as a human being, a fallible man who lived most of his life not on the baseball field, but in a relentless pursuit of his ideals and desire for a better life for himself and everyone around him.

the reviewer before me questions the biographer's lack of judgement of Robinson. i am curious as to why he feels Rampersad should insert his own analysis; the biography presents analyses of Robinson by many of Robinson's contemporaries, and then presents the recorded facts available to clarify incidents & statements. yes, this is an intensely personal biography, perhaps too personal in places. it is very much centered on Jackie's private correspondences. it is absolutely told from Robinson's persepctive, as best can be reconstructed from his widow Rachel & the papers he left behind, but it feels very honest, not at all like an airbrushed bit of hero-polishing. it is in places very blunt about Jackie's shortcomings as observed by his peers & contemporaries.

before i stretch this out any longer, i'll just say that this is the most engrossing biography i can ever recall having read. it's an account of a fascinating life in an amazingly recent time, in an America that seems so long ago but is still discouragingly recent. readers will learn not just about Jackie Robinson, but about two American eras as well.

There are several things that make this book very enjoyable. One is the collection of folklore and "hoodoo", obtained from first-hand information. Ms. Hurston went to Florida for several months to gather her collection of folklore, and then to New Orleans for several more to study under various witchdoctors to gather the "hoodoo" information. Another is that she details her trips to these places. The stories aren't just written out and numbered; you know exactly who told them and under what conditions. I found this really helped me identify with the story much more. Finally, I'm from small-town Florida, and several of the places mentioned were very familiar to me. It's always nice to read a fellow-Floridian's work.

A fantastic collection by Zora Neale Hurtson. Includes spells, and superstions, witch craft, and some of the best short stories around. She gathers up the urban legends of the 1930-40's rural south and connects you to a culture and way of thinking that is both delightful and intriguing. At times amusing; it is written in the way of oral tradition, where people gather around and tell stories, the more outlandish, the more unique the better. Her work is simply wonderful. A great book, and good for those bad weather days.

This audio tape recorded by Ruby Dee of Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men absolutely makes the case for audio-books because of Dee's extraordinary performance. I seriously doubt that Hurston could do better herself. It is so great that this is the third time I am buying it. The first two copies are owned by my Mom (artist Faith Ringgold) who is bi-coastal and keeps a copy loaded in the tape player ready to play, day or night, on each coast, and the third is for me because now from listening to my Mom's tapes I am as addicted to it as she is. This is becoming true of a lot of her friends. Whether you are doing something else or just listening, it fits in perfectly, and it is full of wisdom and laughs. It is absolutely the best, and I would buy anything else that Ruby Dee ever had anything to do with because she is the glue that makes it work.

I thought that the story was realy nice.The charater had many changes to overcome. I like the way he through out his belongings, and started all over. He also was smart after releasing his emosions into the way to Africa.

I enjoyed this book. It is mostly good exept for the begigging. When he started talking about his family was the boring part. The book i good so i recommend it to the readers. It got my attention and i usaully dont read unless it gets my attention. All in all it was a good book.

This book had a profound effect my life as a writer.My mother read it to me at night like fairy tales when I was very young. As I grew up and realized I wanted to write professionally, the lessons in The Big Sea made the writing life seem not only possible, but the best life a person could find. I would say without a doubt that this is my favorite book of all time. If I was marooned on a desert island, this would be the book I would take with me. From his base in Harlem, it shows Hughes embracing the whole world. The Big Sea is a book to read and treasure. again and again.

We read his book for my 8th grade english class. If you likeRobert Hayden, Poetry, Etc. this is a very nice book. If you're likemost of the kids in Mr. Nydicks english class, and you would rather chat than discuss the irony and pain of Middle Passage, this isn't the book for you. But if you like interperative poetry, this is a very nice book by a nice author

ROBERT HAYDEN (1913-1980) was the first African-American to be appointed Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, a position now titled the U.S. Poet Laureate. He won numerous prizes and awards during the last decade of his life, including the 1975 Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for "distinguished poetic achievement." Hayden stands out among Twentieth Century American, poets not just for his many literary accomplishments, but for the strong vision of faith that illuminates so much of his work.

In addition to well known poems such as "Those Winter Sundays" and "The Whipping," this anthology contains other equally stirring poems including "Aunt Jemima Of The Ocean Waves" which depicts a conversation with the fat woman from a Coney Island side-show and "Belsen, Day Of Liberation" dedicated to Rosey Pool, the Dutch teacher of Anne Frank and first translator of her famous diary.

While Hayden writes much about African-American history and culture, his poems do not tell the reader what to think or feel. Instead, his carefully crafted verse weaves images that allow the careful reader to move around in some very unusual territory, some beautiful, some uncomfortable. Hayden puts us in the mind of the oppressor in poems like "Middle Passage" about the famous Amistad incident, and "Night, Death, Mississippi" where we eavesdrop on an old Klan member too frail to attend a lynching with his son, of whom he is proud. "Be there with Boy and the rest / if I was well again. / Time was. Time was. / White robes like moonlight / In the sweetgum dark."

Hayden can also be wickedly funny. In "American Journal" written a few years before his death, his narrator is a spy from a distant planet in the galaxy who reports back to his fellow superiors about "this baffling multi people extremes and variegations their noise restlessness their almost frightening energy."

In addition to poems about childhood, society, and race, Hayden also writes about the history and central figures of his religion, the Bahá'í Faith. In "Baha' u'llah In The Garden Of Ridwan" he compares the founder of Bahá'í at an important juncture to Christ the night before being crucified w ho prayed to be relieved of his great destiny. In "Dawnbreaker" Hayden describes the torture of one early Bahá'í put to death by having candles of oil and wick lit within his skin. "Ablaze / with candles sconced / in weeping eyes / of wounds."

Despite his numerous awards, Hayden was not well known to many poetry readers until the end of his life. Fortunately, his reputation has increased since Collected Poems was published posthumously. If you are interested in rich, well crafted poetry which explores what it means to be human, try Hayden. As Aunt Jemima says in the above mentioned poem, "And that's the beauty part, I mean, ain't that the beauty part."

This book is a remarkable example of the time period. Before reading this, one must understand the logic and the use of words during the renaissance. Understanding this is imperative in order to avoid becoming upset with the literature.

This anthology contains works by many of the most important contributers to the Harlem Renaissance. The best parts of the volume are the poetry selections by poets such as Hughes, Cullen, and McKay as well as the essays by Alain Locke. The works by Hurston and Toomer are also quite good. The essays by Locke (especially the New Negro) feature insight into many of the ideas and developments that took place in order to bring about this important historical and cultural movement. This book is a definite must read.

The Library of America consistently produces wonderful volumes, and Richard Wright's "Early Works" is a strong member of the set. As I worked my way through this volume, I found myself re-thinking questions I have put aside for a while, challenging attitudes that I have acquired as part of our zeitgeist. I did not find that much of interest in "Lawd Today!" and "Uncle Tom's Children," the first two selections in the volume. Perhaps I will take another look at them in the future. However, "Native Son" was a revelation to me, and I found it amazing.

As a student of Mississippi literature, as well as a native Mississippian, I am surprised that I had not read "Native Son" before. I wonder what response Wright might expect me (a white Mississippian) to have to his work. The answer is not as simple as one might think. Growing up in Mississippi, I worked as a dishwasher. I ran errands for people who looked down on me and wanted me to act stupid and grateful. I felt the harsh sting of minor capitalists zealously defending their tiny empires. Like Wright, I grew up in a single-parent household with extremely limited resources. Like Wright, I never had a feeling that "the system" wanted to do anything but keep me in my place. Like Wright, I looked around to see that my people were limited by their ignorance and fear. For all of our differences, white and black Mississippians have far more in common than most people want to admit. It is part of what makes us such a fertile field for literature.

The easy response for a white person, Mississippian or not, is simply to be reactionary, to allow "Native Son" to confirm easy stereotypes. In "How 'Bigger' Was Born," Wright acknowledges that one of the dangers he faced in writing "Native Son" was that those who are pre-disposed to see Bigger as typical of "those people" in general and of blacks in particular would find unequivocal confirmation of their prejudices. Wright must have been constantly tempted to avoid writing with such brutal honesty.

However, it is this honesty that forms the core of Wright's artistic achievement and makes his work enduring, almost prophetic. Bigger Thomas represents a type that still exists in plentitude. In "How 'Bigger' Was Born," Wright explicitly makes the point that Bigger represents a type that is both black and white, a person growing up in the land of plenty without prospects or hope, without enough education to replace instinct with rational calculation. Unable to participate and without a place, our Biggers simply want to blot out everything and everyone from the face of the earth. Some of them unknowingly follow Bigger's example and kill what they think is killing them.

I think I see Bigger every day on the black streets of Atlanta. A close relative of Bigger lives in the white trailer parks in our suburbs. Bigger acts every time a teenager commits a senseless murder, every time a child shoots up a school. I hear an analysis of Bigger when a demagogue politician says that we should just lock them up and throw away the key.

The Biggers of the world are irretrievably lost. As Wright clearly shows, there is no way to cure or save or even rehabilitate such people. Even at the hour of their death, they will not understand context, never know why they act as they do, always returning to the basest of emotions for self-justification. They continue to kill out of fear, and we continue to fear them.

People used to think that they knew how to prevent more Biggers from appearing, how we might save those not yet lost. There was hope that we could change things so that there would be no more Biggers. It turns out that we have Biggers aplenty and more arising every day. Perhaps we always will. No one seems to care any more.

This volume affected me greatly, and I think that it will repay several close readings. It is a definite keeper, well worth the price.

Richard Wright is one of the great American writers. Yeah he wrote largely about the African-American experience, but he shouldn't be pigeon-holed into that. He was just a great writer who wrote about what he experienced. As someone who was part of the Great Migration he knew about southerners who moved to the north. Native Son is considered a classic and there are themes constant across Wright's work that are brilliantly executed in that work. What is interesting, especially, are the chapters that were too controversial for the initial printing. As a whole this volume presents the young black southern experience, and the transplanted urban experience for many of those in Chicago. However reading Black Boy (American Hunger) from the second volume really helps bring home that Wright isn't making things up, but just relating his experiences and the experiences of those around him.

The Essay's presented in Richard Wright : A Collection of Critical Essays (New Century Views)are a new and exciting twist to Wiright's novels. I have read both Native Son and Black Boy, and have pondered the maning of both, not realizing many crucial elements until I read this book. Although some of the books ideas are superficial, most of the essays are in-depth and stimulating. Definately a must-read book.