Writer Ralph Ellison, Monstrous?

I learned a couple of startling things about the African-American author Ralph Ellison (1913-1994) in a "By the Book" Q & A interview in the New York Times Book Review (July 25, 2021).

The interviewee, Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a professor at Princeton and the author of Begin Again: James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own (Crown, 2020), had this to say about Ellison: "I loved Ralph Ellison....But after reading Arnold Rampersad's biography of Ellison, I despised the man. The way he treated his mother, his betrayal of [writer] Albert Murray--monstrous."

I own two review copies of Ralph Ellison: A Biography by Arnold Rampersad (Knopf, 2007). I never got around to reading the book. After seeing that quote from Glaude, I intend to start reading it soon.

Terror In The Sky

The best book trailer that I've seen is the one for Falling (Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster), a thriller by T.J. Newman. It's like watching a mini movie.

I first saw it at a Target store in Harlem on their giant screen near the electronics department. I bought the book the same day I saw the trailer. The trailer didn't influence me because I was planning to buy the book anyway.

I knew I wanted to read it when I read an article about the author, a former flight attendant, and her "what if" scenario on Los Angeles magazine's website. "What would a pilot do," asked the article, "if someone took his family hostage and demanded he crash the plane to save them?"

I wanted to find out and so far (at this writing, I am 85 pages from the end), the book is a real roller coaster ride, or maybe I should say, a turbulent ride, living up to the media hype.

I want to finish it before the movie version comes out which will probably be a year or a year and a half from now. It will be interesting to see how close the movie follows the book.

I read the brief review of Falling in the New York Times Book Review (July 18, 2021) in which the reviewer points to the book's "over-the-topness." But that's why people read thrillers in the first place. These books keep the reader on the edge of their seat, biting their fingernails as a result of their "over-the-topness." The movie will probably be more so.

One thing is for sure, Falling is not a book you'd want to read while flying; it's too scary.

Karmic Justice

The June 11, 2021 issue of The Week magazine published this item: "Good week for: karma, after a boatful of Memorial Day revelers on Washington state's Moses Lake shouted slurs and gave the finger to another boat that was flying Gay Pride flags. Minutes later, the harassers' boat exploded, and they swam to the other boat to be rescued while shouting 'Help us!'"

This item would make an excellent basis for a short story or film short.

A Novel About The Internment Of Japanese-Canadians During WWII

I knew about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. What I didn't know was that the same thing occurred in Canada. While skimming through the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, I came across the name Joy Nozomi Kogawa, a Japanese-Canadian poet and novelist, born in 1935, who wrote a novel called Obasan, published in 1981.

Wikipedia describes Obasan as a book that "chronicles Canada's internment and persecution of its citizens of Japanese descent during the Second World War" and is told "from the perspective of a young child." Obasan, continues the Wikipedia article, "is often required reading for university English courses on Canadian Literature."

I plan to put Obasan on my Must-Read list.

George Stinney Was Executed By South Carolina At Age 14

This story has haunted me ever since I saw it mentioned on the front page of The West Side Spirit (June 10-16, 2021, "Eli's Final Chapter"). In 1944, 14-year-old George Stinney, an African-American, was put to death by the State of South Carolina, writes Ben Krull, "accused of murdering two white girls, ages seven and 11." After what Krull calls a "slipshod one-day trial," Stinney was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair "based on flimsy, circumstantial evidence." The death sentence was carried out within three months, which did not give Stinney a chance for a retrial.

This case is the subject of a book by the late Eli Faber called The Child in the Electric Chair: The Execution of George Junius Stinney Jr. and the Making of a Tragedy in the American South. Faber was a retired professor of history at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The book was published on June 25, 2021 by the University of South Carolina Press.

This is the first time I ever heard of a person so young going to the electric chair. It should come as no surprise that in a Southern state like South Carolina, the life of a black person, adult or child, had no value.

The Child in the Electric Chair deserves to be read. It also deserves to be adapted into a major motion picture, showing the cruelty, injustice, and bloodthirstiness of the Jim Crow South. This book should give advocates of the death penalty an opportunity to reconsider its use and to acknowledge the barbarism of the death penalty.

Hubert Delany, Science Fiction Writer Samuel Delany's Uncle, Needs A Biography Written About Him

Stephen L. Carter's fascinating biography of his grandmother Eunice Hunton Carter (1899-1970), Invisible: The Forgotten Story of the Black Woman Lawyer Who Took Down America's Most Powerful Mobster (Henry Holt, 2018), mentions another fascinating figure, Hubert Delany.

I'm hoping someone will write a book or make a documentary film about Delany (1901-1990) who, writes Carter, "was the Negro lawyer who was the GOP candidate in the November 1929 special election for Harlem's seat in the House of Representatives." He lost that election due to the unscrupulous, racist antics of Tammany Hall Democrats.

A graduate of the New York University Law School, Delany went on to become an assistant U.S. Attorney specializing in white-collar crime.

His sisters were Sadie and Bessie Delany, who wrote the famous memoir, Having Our Say. His nephew is the science fiction writer Samuel R. Delany.

Until a book about Hubert Delany is written, I'll have to be content with whatever information can be had about him in his sisters's memoir.

Note: The mobster referred to in the subtitle of Carter's book is Charles "Lucky" Luciano.

I sent Samuel Delany a message on Facebook stating that his uncle deserved a full-length biography. He agreed with me. I asked him if he had any information about his uncle not mentioned in the Carter book. Here is what he wrote on June 20, 2021:

"Characters based on both my dad and Uncle Hubert are the focus of much of the first short novel in 'Atlantis:Three Tales.' Certainly he was the biggest influence-for-good on my father. Probably on me, too. At least one scholar was pretty convinced he was gay.

"From another older cousin, dead a few years ago, I had confirmation of a long-term-close friendship (and possibly affair) with a famous black singer who was also his client. There's a bit of not-talked-about stuff in my report of his funeral in 'Letters from Amherst.' But I'd be curious to know more myself...

"He was the paternal uncle closest to me and my father, followed by Uncle Hap."

Must-See Television Shows

Once in a while a show will come on that's must-see TV. For me, it was Dallas in the 1970s and '80s; Lou Grant in the '70s, a series about reporters at a Los Angeles daily newspaper; City of Angels, a 2000 series set in an urban hospital, with a mostly African-American cast (it lasted two seasons); and Smash (2012-2013) which concerned itself with the behind-the-scenes drama of  mounting a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe called Bombshell. Other shows in the must-see category are Monk, Mad Men, and the reality shows Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (the original version) and Shark Tank.

Lately, it's been the weekly night time soap opera Saints & Sinners on the Bounce channel. When I began watching it last year, I thought it was a new series. Consulting the entertainment website IMDb, I learned it debuted in 2016.

Set in a Georgia town called Cypress, the mostly African-American characters are every bit as corrupt, conniving, backstabbing, adulterous, and homicidal as any characters in a white night time or daytime soap. And each week I'm glued to my TV set eager to find out what happens next.

I'm not sure if Saints & Sinners is a candidate for an NAACP Image Award. After all it does depict African-American characters unfavorably. But let's face it, black people in real life are not angels. And there are people in the black community who are corrupt, ruthless, greedy, and murderous. In other words, not nice people. It's foolish to pretend that such people don't exist among us. In fact, it's good to see a show about African-Americans that's not a clown show, that shows us as being human, warts and all, like every other ethnic group in America.