Verdict: carrot
Wow, what a find! James Mitchell, the resident book reviewer for The Star (and thus also for IOL Tonight), picks up Barack Obama: America’s Savior or Judas Goat, Diary of a Mad Black Voter, by one Andrew P Jones – and loves it.
And this relevant to BOOK SA because… ? Why, dear reader, because in the post Mitchell discloses that he’s a white expat American, resident in South Africa for 33 years; that Jones is a black expat American, resident in SA for over a decade; and that the book is actually produced right here in the good ol’ R of SA. It’s SA Lit, American-style!
Being the expat American in the middle (I’ve lived here for 14 years), it’s enough to warm the cockles of my heart. Here’s one for the reviewer’s reliquary, for sure:
This is a rant, written in the finest polemic tradition. I come not to diss Andrew P Jones, but to praise him, and not with Shakespearean irony, either.
This is important, if not always for its factual content, which could be disputed endlessly, but for what it tells the reader about deeply held beliefs and value systems.
The author adds a sub-title: “Diary of a Mad Black Voter”. Mad “at”, rather than just mad. Mad at centuries past, mad at deprivation, mad at the media for its distortion… you name it, he’s mad at it. And it gives his writing real zing.
No ways, though, is Andrew P Jones one of those race hustlers who blame whitey for everything. Some things, yes; everything, no. Back in the mid-1980s he was a prime mover in an initiative to have the 99 percent black Boston “ghetto” of Roxbury become a new, self-governing city named after Nelson Mandela. If they wanted, the voters could take control of the land they lived on…
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