Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

Rating:
Summary: For the young idealists willing to dream
Review: I'd recommend splurging and getting the hardcover copy, because you'll likely put this book through a lot of wear. When my batteries are drained, this book is on the short list of those I grab for to rejuvenate myself. In an age far too "practical" for utopian dreaming, Kelley reminds us of the importance of forming sand castles in the air. "I wrote ["Freedom Dreams"] for anyone bold enough still to dream," Kelley writes, "especially young people who are growing up in what critic Henry Giroux perceptively calls `the culture of cynicism'-young people whose dreams have been utterly coopted by the marketplace." Young idealists-even if they aren't familiar with academic writing or the African American freedom movement-might find themselves radicalized by this book; ideals might become dreams, and dreams become action.

He emphasizes that he did not write the book for "traditional leftists." And to think of Kelley as a "historian with a progressive slant" or his work as polemical would be to miss the point. Kelley confronts what seem to be political questions, but plumbs their historical and philosophical depths, showing how our political debate of the issues don't even ask the right questions, let alone produce good answers. Perhaps the best example of this is how Kelley investigates reparations, tying contemporary movements all the way back to "forty acres and a mule." The narrative of the intervening period, full of lynchings and bombings while (after Reconstruction) devoid of attempts to accept African Americans as citizens, makes one wonder, exactly when did America supposedly make amends for slavery? The answer, sadly, is that we haven't seen that day yet. But reparations, Kelley reminds us, could help bring that day. For Kelley, reparations aren't about "getting paid" but about transforming society.

"Freedom Dreams" is like powerful jazz: intent on finding connections (between the African American freedom movement and the third world, between art and revolution, between social movements and intellectualism) where so much of our scholarship seems to focus on creating false dividers and using big Foucaultian words to describe them. But perhaps even more like jazz, "Freedom Dreams" opens one's mind to new vistas, ones of democracy and utopian social justice similar to what Sidney Bechet must have envisioned when he played "Egyptian Fantasy," or what Charles Mingus saw when he composed "Haitian Fight Song."

Rating:
Summary: For the young idealists willing to dream
Review: I'd recommend splurging and getting the hardcover copy, because you'll likely put this book through a lot of wear. When my batteries are drained, this book is on the short list of those I grab for to rejuvenate myself. In an age far too "practical" for utopian dreaming, Kelley reminds us of the importance of forming sand castles in the air. "I wrote ["Freedom Dreams"] for anyone bold enough still to dream," Kelley writes, "especially young people who are growing up in what critic Henry Giroux perceptively calls 'the culture of cynicism'-young people whose dreams have been utterly coopted by the marketplace." Young idealists-even if they aren't familiar with academic writing or the African American freedom movement-might find themselves radicalized by this book; ideals might become dreams, and dreams become action.

He emphasizes that he did not write the book for "traditional leftists." And to think of Kelley as a "historian with a progressive slant" or his work as polemical would be to miss the point. Kelley confronts what seem to be political questions, but plumbs their historical and philosophical depths, showing how our political debate of the issues don't even ask the right questions, let alone produce good answers. Perhaps the best example of this is how Kelley investigates reparations, tying contemporary movements all the way back to "forty acres and a mule." The narrative of the intervening period, full of lynchings and bombings while (after Reconstruction) devoid of attempts to accept African Americans as citizens, makes one wonder, exactly when did America supposedly make amends for slavery? The answer, sadly, is that we haven't seen that day yet. But reparations, Kelley reminds us, could help bring that day. For Kelley, reparations aren't about "getting paid" but about transforming society.

"Freedom Dreams" is like powerful jazz: intent on finding connections (between the African American freedom movement and the third world, between art and revolution, between social movements and intellectualism) where so much of our scholarship seems to focus on creating false dividers and using big Foucaultian words to describe them. But perhaps even more like jazz, "Freedom Dreams" opens one's mind to new vistas, ones of democracy and utopian social justice similar to what Sidney Bechet must have envisioned when he played "Egyptian Fantasy," or what Charles Mingus saw when he composed "Haitian Fight Song."

Rating:
Summary: An inspiring vision for radical struggles
Review: This is the BEST book I've read in the last 20 years!! A must read for anyone interested in the Utopian vision of radical movements. I learned a great deal about the reparations movement, Black feminism, and a movement no one is talking about-Surrealism. And it's beautifully written.

Rating:
Summary: Dream Your way out of our Constrictions
Review: This is the BEST book I've read in the last 20 years!! A must read for anyone interested in the Utopian vision of radical movements. I learned a great deal about the reparations movement, Black feminism, and a movement no one is talking about-Surrealism. And it's beautifully written.

Rating:
Summary: An inspiring vision for radical struggles
Review: While Robin Kelley might claim this book is not a "true" intellectual history, there's an awful lot of intellect packed inside. His profound thoughts, engaging writing, and motivating ideas all find focus with his idea that the center of any movement for change has to be love -- love of self, love of people, love of place. Jammed with interesting historical notes and biographies, his sweeping perspective on what it has meant to be black and, perhaps more importantly, identified as such, would serve every citizen of the world well. And if Mayor Mike B. and his constitutents would read Kelley's idea for downtown NYC, New York -- and the world -- might have a chance.