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Summary: Between Twist and Revolution: Soul Power in the 1960s
Review: Using humor, love letters, essays, poetic language, and Marxist/Leftist rhetoric Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice" creatively outlines a perspective from which the 1960s might best be approached: "the smell of anger, tear gas, and the sound of skull-cracking billy clubs, helicopters, and revolution is present in its pages". "Soul on Ice" is a classic whose achievements are manifold. Here are three of the strongest:1) In 1992, when Malcolm X was being transformed into a fashion accessory/popular culture icon and the black influence on the cultural politics of the 1960s whitewashed, the reissue of Cleaver's book reminded us that "what was great was not Malcolm X but the truth he uttered" and that the survival of black genius is crucial to the good mental health of white America. 2) Inasmuch as the 1960s of the Civil Rights-Black Power Movement was about closing ranks -among other things- "Soul on Ice" did not support any dysfunctional black unity, which explains its challenge of author James Baldwin's unconstructive and unfair criticisms of writer Richard Wright and Negritude advocate Aimé Césaire. 3) Useful condemnations of slavery's racist (re) presentation of black/American sexual politics (subtle or blatant) can be found in the pages of Cleaver's book; it anticipated much of the contemporary scholarship intervening in part or wholly in this domain: Ed Guerrero's "Framing Blackness", Mike Marqusee's "Redemption Song", and Spike Lee's cultural politics and cinema. Cleaver had his soul on ice but managed to produce this brilliant collection of essays. As readers we must, in turn, freeze "Soul on Ice" in the 1960s fridge; let us consume it 1960s-frozen for therein lies its Twist(ed)-Hula-Hoop(ed) richness. The author of "Soul on Ice" was no prophet, just an intelligent angry young black man who wrote under duress during an era when it was very difficult for his people to free their psyches from subjugation to the point where they could "say it loud: I am black and I am proud!".
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Summary: soul on ice- 30 years later
Review: You Must read this book! It is an important Historical (1968) Document of life in america. Eldridge Cleaver holds nothing back from the reader & makes no excuses. This book is raw, uncensored, and will make you squirm. It will make you re-think your beliefs about racism, crime, sex, incarceration & humanity. amy,CT,USA,28.
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