ceoln reviewed Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver
Review of 'Soul on Ice' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
It's hard to know how many "stars" to give a book that's both important and in some ways evil. Cleaver's essays and letters from Folsom prison in the 60's are a vital snapshot of a strain of radical thinking at that time, and the extent to which things have (and to a great extent haven't) changed since then deserves lots of thinking about. Much of the criticism he directs at the society of his time applies also to ours, if (sometimes) in diluted or veiled form.
On the other hand parts of his thinking are just repugnant; Cleaver often seems to regard women and non-straight people as symbols or tools, rather as people. He was in jail for rape, and straightforwardly and almost unapologetically says that he was raping black women as a sort of warm-up to raping white women for symbolic political ends. The conditions of black men at …
It's hard to know how many "stars" to give a book that's both important and in some ways evil. Cleaver's essays and letters from Folsom prison in the 60's are a vital snapshot of a strain of radical thinking at that time, and the extent to which things have (and to a great extent haven't) changed since then deserves lots of thinking about. Much of the criticism he directs at the society of his time applies also to ours, if (sometimes) in diluted or veiled form.
On the other hand parts of his thinking are just repugnant; Cleaver often seems to regard women and non-straight people as symbols or tools, rather as people. He was in jail for rape, and straightforwardly and almost unapologetically says that he was raping black women as a sort of warm-up to raping white women for symbolic political ends. The conditions of black men at the time may help to explain that, but cannot justify it.
Rather than try for any kind of detailed political analysis, though, I will just recommend that you read it if you haven't; it is an important document about how we got where we are, and where we are now.
