City Kid: A Writer's Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success
by
NELSON GEORGE
TALKING HEAD (excerpt)
Looking
back, I can see that my career, and that of my eighties peers, was
aided to a great degree by a profound change in white America’s
attitudes toward black creativity. Despite the outright hostility of
the ruling GOP administration toward the poor and people of color, the
mass public had no problem embracing Whitney Houston, Bill Cosby, Eddie
Murphy, Toni Morrison, Wynton Marsalis, and a long list of superb black
talent spread over a wide range of disciplines.
Being in New
York, with access to several publications with a national profile with
a national profile, I found myself writing at a time of great talent,
unprecedented success, and a grudging acknowledgement that black people
could actually explain black creative expressions better than white
folks could. Well, maybe I exaggerate a bit. At least they began
putting us on an equal playing field (though papers and mags like the
New York Times or Rolling Stone rarely employed black critics). But
overall a space opened up where I and many others could build a
national profile via white media, which, in turn, led to book
contracts, speaking engagements, and teaching gigs. The mainstream
acceptance of black creativity had a trickle-down effect on myself and
many others.
I think my first national television appearance was
on CBS’s Morning Show in 1984 or so, when I joined a panel talking
about the major summer tours. I must have done all right, because I
soon became a regular talking head on news broadcasts and music related
documentaries, a great many of which were done for British TV. It
amazed me that I kept getting asked to do on-camera interviews, since I
knew I had a tendency to mumble when excited, and my fashion sense has
always been questionable.
Every time a request came in it made
me think of watching ABC’s Wide World of Sports with my mother. The
weekly Saturday afternoon broadcast was legendary for its great opening
voice-over, promising, “The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat,”
and being broadcaster Howard Cosell’s platform to media stardom. Fights
were regular features of the broadcast, and we’d often watch the
ever-increasing number of black fighters dispatch the ever-decreasing
number of great white hopes.
Actually more dangerous for the
race than the boxing contests were the postfight interviews. Ma would
sit with me and hope that the black boxers “could talk.” Nothing upset
her more than a black man on TV who couldn’t pronounce vowels, didn’t
use Gs, or otherwise viewed standard English as a third language. She’d
watch ABC’s loquacious Cosell ask them questions with her psychic
fingers crossed. Ma liked the hard-charging style of Joe Frazier, the
relentless Philadelphia fighter who was Muhammad Ali’s greatest rival,
but squirmed whenever Smokin’ Joe got near a microphone.
---
An excerpt from City Kid Chapter 23 "Voices Inside My Head" will be posted next week.
City Kid: A Writer's Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success will be available April 2nd, 2009.
Pre-Order Now:
http://www.amazon.com/City-Kid-Writers-Post-Soul-Success/dp/0670020362/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221248624&sr=1-1http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780670020362http://search.barnesandnoble.com/City-Kid/Nelson-George/e/9780670020362/http://www.borders.com/online/store/TitleDetail?sku=0670020362Stay tuned for more info on Nelson George's upcoming City Kid appearances:
April 2nd, 2009 – Vertigo Books (College Park, MD)
April 6th, 2009 – Hue-Man Bookstore & Cafe (Harlem)
April 7th, 2009 – Barnes & Noble (Brooklyn Heights)
April 15th, 2009 – Marcus Books (Oakland, CA)
April 16th, 2009 – Book Soup (West Hollywood, CA)
April 17th, 2009 – Eso Won Books & The Root Down (LA, CA)
May 13th, 2009 - Brooklyn Historical Society
